# Visualization in motion - *RobotLife*

This is a repository for original codes of the video games, *RobotLife*, used as a testbed in the paper ["User Experience of Visualizations in Motion: A Case Study and Design Considerations"](https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2024.3456319), published at [IEEE Transactions of Visualization and Computer Graphics](https://www.computer.org/csdl/journal/tg) and presented at [IEEE Visualization 2024](https://ieeevis.org/year/2024/welcome).
*RobotLife* allows players to play a first-person shooting game with different visualizations in motion.

If you use *RobotLife* and our results on **Visualization in motion** in new projects or use it in a different way, we would appreciate a citation:

*RobotLife* is released under [CC-BY 4.0 license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), to cite *RobotLife* as a single video game: 

* *RobotLife*, created by AVIZ, Inria, in 2022.

    ```
      @misc{RobotLife,
        author = {AVIZ, Inria},
        title = {RobotLife: A FPS game on Visualization in Motion},
        url = {https://github.com/lyao0219/RobotLife},
        year = {Created 2022}
    }
    ```

To cite the entire paper:

* Lijie Yao, Federica Bucchieri, Victoria McArthur, Anastasia Bezerianos, Petra Isenberg. User Experience of Visualizations in Motion: A Case Study and Design Considerations. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 174-184, 1 Jan. 2025, doi: [1109/TVCG.2024.34563193](https://doi.org/1109/TVCG.2024.3456319).

    ```
    @ARTICLE{YAO:2025:VideoGame,
        author={Yao, Lijie and Bucchieri, Federica and McArthur, Victoria and Bezerianos, Anastasia and Isenberg, Petra},
        journal={IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics}, 
        title={User Experience of Visualizations in Motion: A Case Study and Design Considerations}, 
        year={2025},
        volume={31},
        number={1},
        pages={174--184},
        doi={10.1109/TVCG.2024.3456319}
    }
    
    ```

To cite the umbrella paper of the topic **Visualization in motion**:

* Lijie Yao, Romain Vuillemot, Anastasia Bezerianos, Petra Isenberg. Visualization in motion: A Research Agenda and Two Evaluations. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 28, no. 10, pp. 3546-3562, 1 Oct. 2022, doi: [10.1109/TVCG.2022.3184993](https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2022.3184993).

    ```
    @ARTICLE{YAO:2022:VisInMotion,
        author={Yao, Lijie and Bezerianos, Anastasia and Vuillemot, Romain and Isenberg, Petra},
        journal={IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics}, 
        title={Visualization in Motion: A Research Agenda and Two Evaluations}, 
        year={2022},
        volume={28},
        number={10},
        pages={3546--3562},
        doi={10.1109/TVCG.2022.3184993}
    }
    ```

To cite the relevant paper presented at [IEEE Visualization 2024](https://ieeevis.org/year/2024/welcome) on visualization in motion with a focus on **Swimming**:

* Lijie Yao, Romain Vuillemot, Anastasia Bezerianos, Petra Isenberg. Designing for Visualization in Motion: Embedding Visualizations in Swimming Videos. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 1821-1836, March 2024. doi: [10.1109/TVCG.2022.3184993](https://doi.org/10.1109/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3341990).

    ```
    @ARTICLE{YAO:2024:Swimming,
        author = {Yao, Lijie and Vuillemot, Romain and Bezerianos, Anastasia and Isenberg, Petra},
        journal = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics}, 
        title = {Designing for Visualization in Motion: Embedding Visualizations in Swimming Videos}, 
        year = {2024},
        volume = {30},
        number = {3},
        pages = {1821--1836},
        doi = {10.1109/TVCG.2023.3341990}
        url={https://github.com/lyao0219/SwimFlow/}
    }
    ```
To read more on **Visualization in Motion**:

1. **The positioning paper**: Lijie Yao, Anastasia Bezerianos, Romain Vuillemot and Petra Isenberg, "Visualization in Motion: A Research Agenda and Two Evaluations," in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 28, no. 10, pp. 3546-3562, 1 Oct. 2022, doi: [10.1109/TVCG.2022.3184993](https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2022.3184993/). Link: [Author version](https://lijieyao.com/assets/pdf/Vis_in_motion_A_Research_Agenda_and_Two_Evaluations.pdf )

2. **With a focus on swimming**: Lijie Yao, Romain Vuillemot, Anastasia Bezerianos and Petra Isenberg, "Designing for Visualization in Motion: Embedding Visualizations in Swimming Videos," in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 1821-1836, March 2024, doi: [10.1109/TVCG.2023.3341990](https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3341990). Link: [Author version](https://lijieyao.com/assets/pdf/Situated_Visualization_in_Motion.pdf).

3. **With a focus on video games**: Lijie Yao, Federica Bucchieri, Victoria McArthur, Anastasia Bezerianos and Petra Isenberg, "User Experience of Visualizations in Motion: A Case Study and Design Considerations," in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 174-184, Jan. 2025, doi: [10.1109/TVCG.2024.3456319](https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2024.3456319). Link: [Author version](https://lijieyao.com/assets/pdf/User_Experience_of_Visualizations_in_Motion_A_Case_Study_and_Design_Considerations.pdf).

4. **A short summarization**: Lijie Yao. Situated Visualization in Motion. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. In press. doi: [10.1109/MCG.2024.3462129](https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2024.3462129). Link: [Author version](https://lijieyao.com/assets/pdf/Situated_Visualization_in_Motion.pdf). 

5. **Awarded dissertation**: Lijie Yao. Situated Visualization in Motion. Human-Computer Interaction [cs.HC]. Université Paris-Saclay, 2023. English. NNT: [2023UPASG093](https://theses.hal.science/tel-04413122). Link: [Author version](https://lijieyao.com/assets/pdf/Lijie_PhD_Thesis.pdf).

## Getting started

To get started, either clone this repository or, if you stay within Github, use the ''use this template'' function to generate your own version of this repository, which you can then edit. You will see the project hierarchy as follows:

```
└── Main directory
    ├── 1-executable version
    ├── 2-source codes
    ├── LICENSE
    └── README.md
```

*RobotLife* was implemented based on the [Unity FPS template](https://learn.unity.com/project/fps-template).
- To run the program directly (on Windows), please click on the ".exe" file in the "1-executable version".
- To import/edit the program, you first need to download and install the [Unity Hub](https://unity.com/unity-hub). Next, you open the entire folder "2-source codes" that you obtain here as a project in the Unity Hub.
Until this step, you should be able to interact with the project.

## Go further

Here, we additionally provide instructions on where you should look if you want to modify the game and the experiment settings.

"FPS" is the main folder containing important things: 

```
└── InitManager.cs
    ├── set participants ID
    ├── call “SceneFlowManager.cs” to initialize the condition list
    ├── start trial & & create files for recording answers & questionnaires

└── QuestionnaireToggleGroups:
    ├── get likert answers

└── QuestionnaireManager.cs:
    ├── set questionnaire’s UI and greetings according to the condition

└── QuestionnaireLikert.cs:
    ├── send likert answers & update UI

└── TrainingManagers.cs:
    ├── initialize buttons

└── check answers
    ├── go to the next training
    ├── destroy the current one

└── TrainingButton.cs:
    ├── identify whether the enemy is evil or not

```