Cognitive Modeling and Eye-tracking/NSF Proposal

2015 Proposal Info

RFP

The IIS RFP is available at: https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13707

NSF IIS Deadlines

• MEDIUM Projects: September 10 - September 16, Annually Thereafter
• LARGE Projects: September 18 - September 24, Annually Thereafter
• SMALL Projects: November 4 - November 18, Annually Thereafter

Minutes

8/10

Weaknesses in CHS Small proposal:

• "level of sensemaking tasks and insight characterization are less well-defined and should be supplemented with concrete examples and metrics (e.g., cost of cognitive operations)
• 'reasoning' and 'sensemaking' levels could be named differently to avoid some confusion
• unit-task level modeling is restricted to a narrow scope (good) but the other levels are not (too vague)
• not clear how individual differences work will be incorporated into models
• lacks a cohesive process for using the three models - clarify how an end-user of the modeling knowledge we produce will apply it to their own system

Discussion:

• Get rid of three levels. The pieces can remain but we should rephrase it to focus on the most important parts related to sensemaking.
• Two main pieces in the research plan: model to predict internal reasoning state ('reasoning model') and model to predict analysis outcomes ('insight model')
• Relationship between those two pieces should be clarified. What is the benefit of each? How are they used?
• New title sounds OK

Next steps:

• Hua: comment on notes regarding adding specificity
• Hua: explore solution for working with repo/online
• Steve: take another pass on proposal integrating what we talked about

8/6

• David sent out notes about the CHS proposal
• Changes mostly about adding specificity, application work, and making sure the framing is clear
• Steve and Hua will take a pass next week
• Steve Sloman interested, could maybe work in a role for 1 CLPS grad student
• Meeting planned for 8/10 (just Steve and Hua) and 8/17 (everyone)

7/16

• reviewed Google Doc with new title/abstract ideas
• ingredients for the various directions are similar
  • As far as the researcher plan, we could start with the 2nd idea (evaluating a bunch of models) then choose one to go more in-depth (1st idea)
    • This timing distinction affects the research plan but doesn't necessarily change the focus of the proposal

6/26

Weaknesses in Expedition:

• Genomics area lacking details; visualization examples
• Genomics applications not cohesive enough
  • Possibly cut Rand, epigenetics
  • Possibly cut Benoist, ImmGen
• [Build on this] Application areas can be strengthened
  • Badre application need update/more specification

Strengths:

• Reviewers liked "Personalization of visualization complexity based on user expertise"
  • [Build on this] What models are needed to achieve this?
  • (dhl wants to make sure this is personalization for enhanced performance not just for preference and that the costs of personalization are also taken into account. these might include learnability and loss of common knowledge (imagine if everyone's keyboard or car controls were different...)
• Reviewers liked "Automatic suggestions of visualizations based on user task"
  • Constructing and integrating a predictive model of user's goal based on query and browsing history
  • [Build on this] Related to Hua's proposed model of Exploratory and Focused Search stages

Ideas for new content:

• Get the Yurt involved
• 2D visualizations in the Yurt? (e.g., D3, web-based)

Past Proposals to NSF

Division	Proposal Number	Location in /pro/graphics/proposals/nsf/	Title	Status	Status Date	Amount Requested
CHS	1563597	iis15.git	CHS: Medium: Improving Visual Analysis Systems for Brain and Genomics Research Using Predictive Models of Sensemaking (reviews)	Declined	2/19/2016
IIS	1524615	chs15.git	CHS: Small: Cognitive and Perceptual Modeling for Exploratory Interactive Visual Analysis (reviews)	Declined	6/1/2015	$499,932
CCF	1317515	expedition12/dhlgit/ expedition12/full_proposal/	Collaborative Research: Scientific Visual Analytics: Advancing Theory and Practice through Cognitive Modeling (reviews)	Declined	4/29/2013	$6,749,915
CCF	1238854	expedition12/dhlgit/ expedition12/preproposal/	Collaborative Research: Cognitive Optimization of Brain-Science and Genomics Visual-Analysis Tools	Invited	8/13/2012	$7,155,897
IIS	1216804	IIS 2011/Strategies/	CGV: Small: Modeling User Strategies for Scientific Visualization Evaluation	Declined	7/13/2012	$497,731
IIS	1115611	IIS 2010/Modeling/	CGV: Small: Modeling the Scientific Reasoning Process for Visualization Evaluation	Declined	6/5/2011	$500,000
CCF	1064261	expedition10/preprop.tex	Collaborative Research: Cognitive Optimization of Brain-Science Visual-Analysis Tools (reviews)	Not Invited	2/17/2011	$4,099,185
ACI	1047832	si2.dhl.10	SI2-SSI: Collaborative Research: Cognition-aware Visual Analytics of Brain Circuits (reviews)	Declined	2/7/2011	$3,367,185

Other Proposals

Hua's PhD proposal overlaps with the NSF proposal topic and is worth drawing upon. It is available here: http://cs.brown.edu/~huag/prop.pdf