PhD position in Immersive Analytics

Title

Representing and interacting with symbolic data within immersive environments

Description

We are seeking for candidates for a PhD fellowship in Design / Computer science on the topic:

Fields

Interaction design, data visualization, immersive environments, data science

Context

The recent development of new consumer grade Virtual Reality (VR) systems raises numerous questions about immersive environments design, immersion perception, content access interfaces, interaction vocabularies and metaphors, collaboration, co-creation or cooperation, user experience and usages evaluation, etc. On this basis, we have started the IDEA (Immersive Data Exploration and Analysis) project, funded by West Creative Industries Cluster. It gathers computer scientists from LS2N lab (DUKe and IPI teams) and designers from READI Design Lab who aim at studying technologies, visual representations, interaction and evaluation techniques to explore and analyse abstract data. This PhD proposal will foster computer science / design collaboration and interdisciplinarity, and will be co-supervised by computer scientists and designers.

Objectives

The candidate will work both on designing native immersive representations of symbolic data and adequate interaction modalities in a context of professional exploratory data analysis. Visual, esthetics, and cognitive research will lead to designing representation elements such as “3D glyphs” specifically adapted to the context of interactive VR systems. These elements will be combined within generative data environments or landscapes expressive and explicit enough to facilitate exploration and comprehension of data patterns. Virtual instruments and interaction tools for navigation or data representation transformations will take advantage of tangible and haptic means, leveraging user bodily action and perception. The student will carry out several iterations, by designing various representation and interaction proposals, implementing and integrating them into the IDEA framework, and evaluating them with real data and problems.

Dates

Application deadline: June 10, 2017

Duration 3 years, beginning September 2017.

Environment

This PhD will take place both at Université de Nantes (Data User Knowledge team of the L2SN lab) and Ecole de Design Nantes Atlantique (READI Design Lab).

Supervision

Yannick Prié (Pr., Université de Nantes, LS2N), Grégoire Cliquet (Dr, Ecole de Design Nantes Atlantique), Fabien Picarougne (Ass. Pr., Université de Nantes, LS2N)

Candidate

Master or equivalent degree with high grades, research experience in the field of interaction design, virtual reality, human computer interaction, or data visualisation. Good programming skills for virtual environments. Good english reading and writing abilities. Proven interest for interdisciplinarity.

Contact

Sent CV + motivation letter + master transcripts of grades + references to g.cliquet@lecolededesign.com, fabien.picarougne@univ-nantes.fr, yannick.prie@univ-nantes.fr