|
 TECS
Week is an annual workshop on a topic related to computer science
and software engineering held at TRDDC, Pune. It aims at providing
high-quality computer science education to students, teachers and
practitioners from developing countries.
The topic for
TECS Week 2008 was Human Computer Interaction, Virtual Reality, and
Data Visualization. Five
experts of international repute delivered a series of lectures on a
variety of topics relevant to the theme of the workshop. The
lectures were a mix of fundamental principles and the
frontiers of the field.
The speakers were Dr. Stephen Ellis from NASA Ames Research Center,
Professors Tamara Munzner from the University of British Columbia,
Sethuraman Panchanathan from the Arizona State University,
Harold Thimbleby from the University of Swansea, and Dr. Kentaro
Toyama from Microsoft
Research, India.
 Stephen
Ellis (
NASA AMES Research Center
,
USA) talked
about principles of communicating data through pictures (with
application to visualizing radar data in aircraft cockpits),
interactive and virtual environments, and latency in virtual
environments.
Sethuraman
Panchanathan (
Arizona State University
,
USA
) lectured
on Human Centric Multimedia computing, multimodal rehabilitative
devices, their interface issues, and surgical simulation interfaces.
He detailed some
of the cutting edge projects in these areas that he is currently
involved in .
Tamara
Munzner (
University of British Columbia
,
Canada
) spoke about various aspects of Information Visualization.
Besides design principles, she elucidated factors like perception,
color and space. She
extensively surveyed the latest developments on problems in
obtaining multiple but coherent views of data, navigating through
large data and visualizing high-dimensional data.
Harold
Thimbleby (
Swansea University
,
UK
) discussed
issues in designing interfaces for hardware devices. He showed that
the user interfaces of devices like calculators, mobile phones and
health-care instruments are often flawed, and demonstrated
alternative solutions. He made strong arguments in favour of using
formal methods in designing such interfaces, which were well
received by the audience.
 Kentaro
Toyama (Microsoft
Research
,
India
)
talked about technologies for socio-economic development. His talks
described the various projects that he is currently involved in
attempting to use information technology for the benefit of the
rural and urban poor. He listed out the challenges in designing user
interfaces for computers catering to illiterate and semiliterate
populations and for the spread of literacy among children.
A guest lecture was delivered by Professor Ravin
Balakrishnan from the
University
of
Toronto
.
The lectures were
in the spirit of the theme: highly practical and application
oriented. They demonstrated the use of cutting technologies for
solving a variety of problems in Human-Computer Interaction and Data
Visualization. The lectures were extremely interactive because of
enthusiastic audience participation.
|