Active proxy dashboard: Binding physical referents and abstract data representations in situated visualization through tangible interaction

Myriad systems have been proposed in recent years involving situated visualization with tangible scale models as proxies for physical referents. Most of these focus on static placements of scale models that mimic their real-world arrangement. While such static placement is useful to show the spatial context of referents, it does not take full advantage of the potential interaction affordances of the proxies. Our approach, Active Proxy, binds the data representation and referent through physical manipulations of scale models. We introduce a conceptual design space defining four quadrants as combinations of two dimensions: spatial to abstract representation; and passive to active proxy. Our focus is the novel quadrant defined by active proxies and abstract representations. Designing active proxy techniques is non-trivial as users are accustomed to common interaction modalities. This paper presents an initial exploration toward a better understanding of the active proxy concept, and designs of active proxy systems.