Hello!

I am a postdoctoral fellow at KITE, University Health Network, Canada. I collaborate under the mentorship of Dr. Sharon Gabison on various research initiatives, including the development of smart-based socks for the prevention and management of Diabetic Foot Ulcers (DFU), as well as research related to pressure injury management.

I defended my doctoral thesis, “Visualizations for Smartwatches and Fitness Trackers,” at the AVIZ research team, INRIA, and Université Paris-Saclay, under the supervision of Dr. Petra Isenberg. In my thesis, I studied the challenges of designing and using micro-visualizations for pervasive and mobile data exploration.

My research focuses on the areas of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information Visualization (InfoVis). Specifically, I am interested in designing novel wearable interfaces and exploring techniques for analyzing and visualizing personal health data on wearable devices. I combine cross-sectional, qualitative, and quantitative studies in my research efforts. These methodologies encompass survey studies, design thinking approaches, experiments on human-factor perception, interactions, and evaluations.

Publications

chi22_sleep_study
Preferences and Efectiveness of Sleep Data Visualizations for Smartwatches and Fitness Bands
Alaul Islam, Ranjini Aravind, Tanja Blascheck, Anastasia Bezerianos, Petra Isenberg
CHI 2022 || Proc. of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

We present the findings of four studies related to the visualization of sleep data on wearables with two form factors: smartwatches and fitness bands. Our goal was to understand the interests, preferences, and effectiveness of different sleep visualizations by form factor... Read More
 
chi22_sleep_study
Reflections on Visualization in Motion for Fitness Trackers
Alaul Islam, Lijie Yao, Anastasia Bezerianos, Tanja Blascheck, Tingying He, Bongshin Lee, Romain Vuillemot, Petra Isenberg
MobileHCI 2022 || Proc. of the New Trends in HCI and Sports Workshop at MobileHCI

In this paper, we reflect on our past work towards understanding how to design visualizations for fitness trackers that are used in motion... Read More
 
Context Specific Vis
Context Specific Visualizations on Smartwatches
Alaul Islam, Tanja Blascheck, and Petra Isenberg
EuroVis 2022 || Posters of the European Conference on Visualization (EuroVis)

We present an analysis of the results of a full-day context-specific ideation exercise for smartwatch visualizations. Participants of the exercise created 34 sketches during a sightseeing activity. Our analysis of these sketches showed where visualizations could be applied and shown, what information needs they could target, and how data could be represented in the sightseeing context.... Read More
 
Mobile Visualization Design
    Mobile Visualization Design: An Ideation Method to Try
    Sheelagh Carpendale, Petra Isenberg, Charles Perin, Tanja Blascheck, Foroozan Daneshzand, Alaul Islam, Katherine Currier, Peter Buk, Victor Cheung, Lien Quach, Laton Vermette
    Book Chapter 2021 || Chapman and Hall/CRC

    To discover ways to create new designs for smartwatch visualizations we explored the potential of an in-situ ideation method during a half-day group sightseeing activity in Stuttgart, Germany...... Read More
     
    Context Specific Vis
    Visualizing Information on Watch Faces: A Survey with Smartwatch Users
    Alaul Islam, Tanja Blascheck, and Petra Isenberg
    VIS 2020 || IEEE Information Visualization (VIS) Short Papers

    We present the findings of a survey with 237 smartwatch wearers, and assess the types of data and representations commonly displayed on watch faces. We found a predominant display of health & fitness data, with icons accompanied by text being the most frequent representation type......Read More
     

    Publication Summary

    EDUCATION

     

    RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

     

    JOB EXPERIENCE

    Volunteer Experience

    • PhD Students Representative
      2020 - 2021

      ED-STIC (Pole B) , Université Paris-Saclay

      Paris-Saclay, France

    • Event coordinator
      May 2020 - December 2020

      CARaDOC , Université Paris-Saclay

      Paris-Saclay, France

    • Student Volunteer
      2020 - 2022

      IEEE VIS (2020, 2021), EuroVis 2022

      Virtual, Italy

    Favourite Class Projects

    project
    Smartwatch Interaction

    This prototype shows two modalities of interaction with a smartwatch visualization; specifically, it shows how to interact with a bar chart for time series data on a smartwatch display. I designed and developed the prototype for the InfoVis course project at Université Paris-Saclay in 2020.

    project
    3D Point Cloud Interaction

    During my master thesis internship at CEA Tech, Toulouse, I proposed and implemented four selection techniques for the 3D point cloud data selection. This project was part of CEA in collaboration with the cyber security department.

    project
    Gender Project

    This is an Augmented Reality based fun project; accomplished for the HCI Exhibition 2019, Université Paris-Saclay. Basically, we showed social pressure on gender preferences using AR and tablet-based interactions.

    project
    AR Based Shopping Experience

    This AR-based prototype is for real-time collaborative shopping. This was also a fun project for CSCW coursework at the Université Paris-Saclay HCI master's program.

    project
    Interactive Map Ideation

    Video Prototype "Reify people's physical real-time locations on a whereabouts clock".