This project was the result of the course Human-Computer Interaction, for which it won the award of "Best Prototype", and was done in collaboration with Rosa Zwart. It aimed to develop a data visualization application controlled by only using gestures. This is accompanied with the goal of establishing a more explorative interaction with data visualization when compared to the data navigation using regular pointing devices. To make the interaction with an interface based on gestures possible, the Leap Motion sensor has been used in the application named the DataSphere showing data about earthquakes that have appeared in the last century. This visualization is as follows navigated by using gestures that we have specified and implemented.

The project is done totally in TouchDesigner. We did explore many ways of interacting with the virtual object and we choose to go for the Leap Motion because we wanted to stimulate a more physical-like interaction. The sphere in fact could be rotated, scaled and "screenshotted" with the right hand. On the other side, by doing the "pitching" gesture with the left hand, the user could navigate through the database. Earthquakes are shown as circles of different colors and with a radius proportional to the magnitude of the earthquake.The instructions are given to the user with simple animations of the hand gestures.

This work was the result of multiple iterations of prototypes and user evaluations. The aim of the project was to search for new ways of interacting with data. The interaction however, has been evaluated by the users as playful, but it did not improve the experience of navigating through the data, because users took quite some time to get used to the system.

You can find the original paper with detailed explanations of the code and experiments here: PAPER

The following video shows one of the first prototypes and not the final version. It doesn't show the final UI, and the movements are not smooth as in the final version. However, I do not have access to a Leap Motion anymore, so I have uploaded this video to give an idea of the system.