arXiv subjects

Ali Mazalek

Publications and source records attributed to Ali Mazalek.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

GeoTEAM: A Geospatial Tangible User Interface for Exploration and Visual Analysis of Migration Data

Migration studies is an interdisciplinary field, requiring collaboration between researchers with varying levels of geospatial and quantitative data literacy. Geospatial tangible user interfaces (GTUIs) offer promising opportunities for embodied and collaborative spatial exploration of migration data. Few GTUIs, however, provide real-time visual feedback of data values to help users collaboratively identify trends. To address this gap, we present GeoTEAM, a novel tangible system for real-time, dynamic regional exploration, co-designed with migration and HCI researchers. GeoTEAM features active tangible dials with built-in touchscreens designed to control time and navigate map layers for net migration and various environmental sub-drivers in a multi-surface environment with tabletop and wall displays. We evaluated this system with nine pairs of researchers possessing multi-expertise in geospatial data literacy. Qualitative findings show that our system promotes collaboration, intuitive sense-making, and increased user confidence, enabled by physical interaction and real-time feedback from the active tangibles.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

Collaboratively Eliciting Gestures for Geospatial Data Exploration on an MSE with Tangibles and Styluses

Large tabletop displays and multi-surface environments offer potential for enhancing visual data exploration and collaborative work with geospatial datasets. These systems typically rely on multi-touch interactions, which can pose challenges when the multi-touch sensors misrepresent transitory movements as control inputs, leading to interruptions. Active tangibles and styluses offer an alternative to multi-touch interactions in MSEs, and have shown the potential to facilitate sense-making around large datasets. However, further research is needed to better understand how these modalities can be effectively leveraged for interacting with geospatial data visualizations. To address this, a gesture elicitation study was conducted in which users suggested interactions for 16 geospatial data visualization tasks, presented as a realistic collaborative workflow co-designed with geography and migration researchers. The study produced a taxonomy of user-defined gestures using tangibles and styluses for engaging with geospatial data, along with a thematic analysis of users' experiences with visualization tasks and interaction techniques.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

Virtual Reality Alters Perceived Functional Body Size

Virtual reality (VR) introduces sensory perturbations that may impact perception and action. The current study was designed to investigate how immersive VR presented through a head-mounted display (HMD) affects perceived functional body size using a passable aperture paradigm. Participants (n=60) performed an action task (sidle through apertures) and a perception task (adjust aperture width until passable without contact) in both physical, unmediated reality (UR) and VR. Results revealed significantly higher action and perceptual thresholds in VR compared to UR. Affordance ratios (perceptual threshold over action threshold) were also higher in VR, indicating that the increase in perceptual thresholds in VR was driven partly by sensorimotor uncertainty, as reflected in the increase in the action thresholds, and partly by perceptual distortions imposed by VR. This perceptual overestimation in VR also persisted as an aftereffect in UR following VR exposure. Geometrical modelling attributed the disproportionate increase in the perceptual threshold in VR primarily to depth compression. This compression, stemming from the vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC), caused the virtual aperture to be perceived as narrower than depicted, thus requiring a wider adjusted aperture. Critically, after mathematically correcting for the VAC's impact on perceived aperture width, the affordance ratios in VR became equivalent to those in UR. These outcomes demonstrate a recovered invariant geometrical scaling, suggesting that perception remained functionally attuned to action capabilities once VAC-induced distortions were accounted for. These findings highlight that VR-induced depth compression systematically alters perceived body-environment relationships, leading to an altered sense of one's functional body size.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Investigating A Geometrical Solution to the Vergence-Accommodation Conflict for Targeted Movements in Virtual Reality

While virtual reality (VR) holds significant potential to revolutionize digital user interaction, how visual information is presented through VR head-mounted displays (HMDs) differs from naturalistic viewing and interactions in physical environments, leading to performance decrements. One critical challenge in VR development is the vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC), which arises due to the intrinsic constraints of approximating the natural viewing geometry through digital displays. Although various hardware and software solutions have been proposed to address VAC, no commercially viable option has been universally adopted by manufacturers. This paper presents and evaluates a software solution grounded in a vision-based geometrical model of VAC that mediates VAC's impact on movement in VR. This model predicts the impact of VAC as a constant offset to the vergence angle, distorting the binocular viewing geometry that results in movement undershooting. In Experiment 1, a 3D pointing task validated the model's predictions and demonstrated that VAC primarily affects online movements involving real-time visual feedback. Experiment 2 implemented a shader program to rectify the effect of VAC, improving movement accuracy by approximately 30%. Overall, this work presented a practical approach to reducing the impact of VAC on HMD-based manual interactions, enhancing the user experience in virtual environments.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2017

Metrics for Bengali Text Entry Research

With the intention of bringing uniformity to Bengali text entry research, here we present a new approach for calculating the most popular English text entry evaluation metrics for Bengali. To demonstrate our approach, we conducted a user study where we evaluated four popular Bengali text entry techniques.

cs.HC↗