I am looking for a PhD student (to start by 2027) to conduct research on augmenting physical activities with first-person (situated) visualizations. This PhD will build on our recent research on (immersive) visualization for running.
I am particularly looking for a student who is an avid sportsperson (any sport or physical activity will do), who can bring their knowledge, expertise, practice and community to the research project and is eager to combine their passion with their research work.

Digital technologies that provide people with real-time information as they perform physical activities have become a billion-dollar industry. However, current technologies are largely limited to displaying text on hardware such as smartwatches, and checking and interacting with data on such devices while exercising is cumbersome; people often need to press buttons, perform gestures, and hold their watch or phone up to access data. This interrupts natural motion, breaks the flow of the activity, and can be hazardous as it diverts attention from the environment to the display.
The physical environments in which activities are conducted, such as weather and equipment, introduce perceptual challenges and limit interactions with technology. Therefore, there is a need to design new technology that supports unobtrusive, in-situ, fast and safe access to data. The new generation of Extended Reality devices can integrate visual information directly into someone’s surrounding environment, affording a large display, in-situ and unobtrusive access to data, and interaction modalities such as gesture and gaze as alternatives to touch interactions on small displays.

This PhD research will look at visualization and HCI research challenges and opportunities for designing technologies that provide in-situ, unobtrusive, fast and safe access to data when performing physical activities. It will include:
      > Understanding and characterizing selected activities in terms of their user goals and tasks, data needs, environments, and contexts;
      > building infrastructure to support data acquisition, processing, and representation; and
      > designing, implementing, and evaluating novel situated first-person visualizations.
These objectives will be achieved using human-computer interaction methods throughout, from understanding human needs, goals, and behaviors to (co-)designing prototype situated first-person visualizations to evaluating those quantitatively and qualitatively.

if you are interested, make sure you check the prospective students information at the bottom of this page before getting in touch ;)

I am sometimes recruiting students

If you are considering applying for graduate studies and interested in working with me on topics related to information visualization and human-computer interaction, then please give the prospective students section below a read before contacting me.

IMPORTANT:
Do not expect a response if you send me a generic email. Please take the time to read this page, have a look some of at my recent publications, and make sure you review the guidelines for applying to study with VIXI professors.

You wil work directly with me in a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment. I am open to any research idea related to my expertise and interests, and I welcome applicants from a wide range of disciplines, including Computer Science, Engineering, Design, and Cognitive Science. I strongly encourage applicants with multi- and inter-disciplinary backgrounds. I am also very interested in co-supervising across departments, and faculties. To inquire, simply send me an email at cperin@uvic.ca with:

• a subject header that includes "Prospective Student" and your name
• your CV, including transcripts
• A brief outline of research interests, including information about the project you would be interested in working on (either something I am working on or a topic of your own choice)
• A short paragraph explaining why you would like to work with me (a bit more elaborated than "because you are awesome")
• Your favourite sport (to show that you have read this document)
• A document you have written. This can be a dissertation, a course project report, a technical report, a conference paper, etc..

Requirements

There are some requirements you need to meet to work with me.

• You need to enrol as a student at the University of Victoria. Please consult our Graduate Studies Admissions website for the administrative part.
• You should be familiar with my research interests and areas.
• You should be passionate about conducting research. I am looking for enthusiastic students.

Research Interests

My interests and expertise include personal visualization, immersive visualization, sports visualization, physical and tangible visualization. I am particularly interested in researching how to help people leverage their own data for self-reflection, decision-making, and sharing; as well as ubiquitous visualization in everyday settings.

Most of my research projects are design-centred, including design studies, design space explorations, and tasks and requirements analysis. Projects can also be more technology-centered, with a focus on implementation and technology. Depending on the project, they can involve qualitative and/or quantitative evaluations.

Topics

Topics of interest include:

• Storytelling and narrative style with relatable visualizations.
• Tools for authoring and sharing personal visualizations.
• Geographical visualization, visualization for the digital humanities, visualization of open-data, sports visualization, visualization for citizen-science.
• Physical representation of data, in particular in a personal environment like a home.
• Perceptual and cognitive principles for visualization (e.g., perception of uncertainty, non-visual perception of data).
• Embedded / Situated Visualization on small devices, visualization on smartphones and smart-watches, and visualization with Augmented / Virtual Reality technologies.

What you can expect

• Personal supervision (weekly one-on-one meetings).
• Support to attend relevant academic conferences.
• Support to become a proficient writer and presenter
• Collaborative work with internal and international collaborators