HoloBox: Augmented Visualization and Presentation with Spatially Integrated Presenter

While visualization alone can play a meaningful role, visualized images today often fail to invoke active engagement from the audience. In numerous cases, a human presenter’s interactive involvement can drastically enhance the engagement with visualization. In this paper, we propose and further develop a novel concept called augmented presentation, in which a human presenter occupies the same physical space as the visualization, thereby presenting and interacting with the visualized information seamlessly. We focus mainly on investigating the potential of the presenter by referring to the interaction framework for visualization and the proposed presenter’s roles. Depending on the type of interaction and level of engagement, the presenter’s role may vary from a narrator to an augmenter who may be regarded as part of the visualization. Further developing the idea of augmented presentation, we designed and implemented a presentation system named HoloBox. Then, we conducted two user studies to investigate the possibilities of HoloBox as a new presentation channel. The results suggest that our new form of augmented presentation has the potential to enhance the quality of presentations and enrich the audience experience with regard to visualization. In terms of the presenter, five out of six participants chose HoloBox as their preferred presentation method despite the extra effort required to make a presentation. We believe that our augmented presentation can support new forms of visualization and information delivery.