Linguistic Interpretations of Scuba Dive Computer Data

Exploratory visualizations of dive computer data are available to the scuba diving community to examine the safety of their recorded dives. In a study involving certified scuba divers on the usage of these visualizations we found that these are not used regularly which agrees well with the suspicions expressed by the medical staff who attend to patients with diving related illnesses. We built a prototype knowledge based system that interprets dive computer data to automatically generate their linguistic interpretations to supplement the existing visualizations. We hypothesized that linguistic interpretations by virtue of their structure communicate safety related messages directly to divers. Our evaluation showed that divers like the idea of integrating linguistic interpretations into existing visualizations. However, the study also showed that linguistic interpretations can be useful only if they are emotionally appropriate to individual divers.