DevLan/vispubs huggingface dataset:
Revisiting Bertin Matrices: New Interactions for Crafting Tabular Visualizations
Authors: Charles Perin, Pierre Dragicevic, Jean-Daniel Fekete
Published at InfoVis, 2014

We present Bertifier, a web app for rapidly creating tabular visualizations from spreadsheets. Bertifier draws from Jacques Bertin's matrix analysis method, whose goal was to “simplify without destroying” by encoding cell values visually and grouping similar rows and columns. Although there were several attempts to bring this method to computers, no implementation exists today that is both exhaustive and accessible to a large audience. Bertifier remains faithful to Bertin's method while leveraging the power of today's interactive computers. Tables are formatted and manipulated through crossets, a new interaction technique for rapidly applying operations on rows and columns. We also introduce visual reordering, a semi-interactive reordering approach that lets users apply and tune automatic reordering algorithms in a WYSIWYG manner. Sessions with eight users from different backgrounds suggest that Bertifier has the potential to bring Bertin's method to a wider audience of both technical and non-technical users, and empower them with data analysis and communication tools that were so far only accessible to a handful of specialists.COMPUTER
Stenomaps: Shorthand for shapes
Authors: Arthur van Goethem, Andreas W. Reimer, Bettina Speckmann, Jo Wood
Published at InfoVis, 2014

We address some of the challenges in representing spatial data with a novel form of geometric abstraction-the stenomap. The stenomap comprises a series of smoothly curving linear glyphs that each represent both the boundary and the area of a polygon. We present an efficient algorithm to automatically generate these open, C&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;-continuous splines from a set of input polygons. Feature points of the input polygons are detected using the medial axis to maintain important shape properties. We use dynamic programming to compute a planar non-intersecting spline representing each polygon's base shape. The results are stylised glyphs whose appearance may be parameterised and that offer new possibilities in the 'cartographic design space'. We compare our glyphs with existing forms of geometric schematisation and discuss their relative merits and shortcomings. We describe several use cases including the depiction of uncertain model data in the form of hurricane track forecasting; minimal ink thematic mapping; and the depiction of continuous statistical data.
TenniVis: Visualization for Tennis Match Analysis
Authors: Tom Polk, Jing Yang 0001, Yueqi Hu, Ye Zhao 0003
Published at InfoVis, 2014

Existing research efforts into tennis visualization have primarily focused on using ball and player tracking data to enhance professional tennis broadcasts and to aid coaches in helping their students. Gathering and analyzing this data typically requires the use of an array of synchronized cameras, which are expensive for non-professional tennis matches. In this paper, we propose TenniVis, a novel tennis match visualization system that relies entirely on data that can be easily collected, such as score, point outcomes, point lengths, service information, and match videos that can be captured by one consumer-level camera. It provides two new visualizations to allow tennis coaches and players to quickly gain insights into match performance. It also provides rich interactions to support ad hoc hypothesis development and testing. We first demonstrate the usefulness of the system by analyzing the 2007 Australian Open men's singles final. We then validate its usability by two pilot user studies where two college tennis coaches analyzed the matches of their own players. The results indicate that useful insights can quickly be discovered and ad hoc hypotheses based on these insights can conveniently be tested through linked match videos.
The Effects of Interactive Latency on Exploratory Visual Analysis
Authors: Zhicheng Liu, Jeffrey Heer
Published at InfoVis, 2014

To support effective exploration, it is often stated that interactive visualizations should provide rapid response times. However, the effects of interactive latency on the process and outcomes of exploratory visual analysis have not been systematically studied. We present an experiment measuring user behavior and knowledge discovery with interactive visualizations under varying latency conditions. We observe that an additional delay of 500ms incurs significant costs, decreasing user activity and data set coverage. Analyzing verbal data from think-aloud protocols, we find that increased latency reduces the rate at which users make observations, draw generalizations and generate hypotheses. Moreover, we note interaction effects in which initial exposure to higher latencies leads to subsequently reduced performance in a low-latency setting. Overall, increased latency causes users to shift exploration strategy, in turn affecting performance. We discuss how these results can inform the design of interactive analysis tools.
The Influence of Contour on Similarity Perception of Star Glyphs
Authors: Johannes Fuchs 0001, Petra Isenberg, Anastasia Bezerianos, Fabian Fischer 0001, Enrico Bertini
Published at InfoVis, 2014

We conducted three experiments to investigate the effects of contours on the detection of data similarity with star glyph variations. A star glyph is a small, compact, data graphic that represents a multi-dimensional data point. Star glyphs are often used in small-multiple settings, to represent data points in tables, on maps, or as overlays on other types of data graphics. In these settings, an important task is the visual comparison of the data points encoded in the star glyph, for example to find other similar data points or outliers. We hypothesized that for data comparisons, the overall shape of a star glyph-enhanced through contour lines-would aid the viewer in making accurate similarity judgments. To test this hypothesis, we conducted three experiments. In our first experiment, we explored how the use of contours influenced how visualization experts and trained novices chose glyphs with similar data values. Our results showed that glyphs without contours make the detection of data similarity easier. Given these results, we conducted a second study to understand intuitive notions of similarity. Star glyphs without contours most intuitively supported the detection of data similarity. In a third experiment, we tested the effect of star glyph reference structures (i.e., tickmarks and gridlines) on the detection of similarity. Surprisingly, our results show that adding reference structures does improve the correctness of similarity judgments for star glyphs with contours, but not for the standard star glyph. As a result of these experiments, we conclude that the simple star glyph without contours performs best under several criteria, reinforcing its practice and popularity in the literature. Contours seem to enhance the detection of other types of similarity, e. g., shape similarity and are distracting when data similarity has to be judged. Based on these findings we provide design considerations regarding the use of contours and reference structures on star glyphs.
The Not-so-Staggering Effect of Staggered Animated Transitions on Visual Tracking
Authors: Fanny Chevalier, Pierre Dragicevic, Steven Franconeri
Published at InfoVis, 2014

Interactive visual applications often rely on animation to transition from one display state to another. There are multiple animation techniques to choose from, and it is not always clear which should produce the best visual correspondences between display elements. One major factor is whether the animation relies on staggering-an incremental delay in start times across the moving elements. It has been suggested that staggering may reduce occlusion, while also reducing display complexity and producing less overwhelming animations, though no empirical evidence has demonstrated these advantages. Work in perceptual psychology does show that reducing occlusion, and reducing inter-object proximity (crowding) more generally, improves performance in multiple object tracking. We ran simulations confirming that staggering can in some cases reduce crowding in animated transitions involving dot clouds (as found in, e.g., animated 2D scatterplots). We empirically evaluated the effect of two staggering techniques on tracking tasks, focusing on cases that should most favour staggering. We found that introducing staggering has a negligible, or even negative, impact on multiple object tracking performance. The potential benefits of staggering may be outweighed by strong costs: a loss of common-motion grouping information about which objects travel in similar paths, and less predictability about when any specific object would begin to move. Staggering may be beneficial in some conditions, but they have yet to be demonstrated. The present results are a significant step toward a better understanding of animation pacing, and provide direction for further research.
The Persuasive Power of Data Visualization
Authors: Anshul Vikram Pandey, Anjali Manivannan, Oded Nov, Margaret Satterthwaite, Enrico Bertini
Published at InfoVis, 2014

Data visualization has been used extensively to inform users. However, little research has been done to examine the effects of data visualization in influencing users or in making a message more persuasive. In this study, we present experimental research to fill this gap and present an evidence-based analysis of persuasive visualization. We built on persuasion research from psychology and user interfaces literature in order to explore the persuasive effects of visualization. In this experimental study we define the circumstances under which data visualization can make a message more persuasive, propose hypotheses, and perform quantitative and qualitative analyses on studies conducted to test these hypotheses. We compare visual treatments with data presented through barcharts and linecharts on the one hand, treatments with data presented through tables on the other, and then evaluate their persuasiveness. The findings represent a first step in exploring the effectiveness of persuasive visualization.
The relation between visualization size, grouping, and user performance
Authors: Connor Gramazio, Karen B. Schloss, David H. Laidlaw
Published at InfoVis, 2014

In this paper we make the following contributions: (1) we describe how the grouping, quantity, and size of visual marks affects search time based on the results from two experiments; (2) we report how search performance relates to self-reported difficulty in finding the target for different display types; and (3) we present design guidelines based on our findings to facilitate the design of effective visualizations. Both Experiment 1 and 2 asked participants to search for a unique target in colored visualizations to test how the grouping, quantity, and size of marks affects user performance. In Experiment 1, the target square was embedded in a grid of squares and in Experiment 2 the target was a point in a scatterplot. Search performance was faster when colors were spatially grouped than when they were randomly arranged. The quantity of marks had little effect on search time for grouped displays (“pop-out”), but increasing the quantity of marks slowed reaction time for random displays. Regardless of color layout (grouped vs. random), response times were slowest for the smallest mark size and decreased as mark size increased to a point, after which response times plateaued. In addition to these two experiments we also include potential application areas, as well as results from a small case study where we report preliminary findings that size may affect how users infer how visualizations should be used. We conclude with a list of design guidelines that focus on how to best create visualizations based on grouping, quantity, and size of visual marks.
Tree Colors: Color Schemes for Tree-Structured Data
Authors: Martijn Tennekes, Edwin de Jonge
Published at InfoVis, 2014

We present a method to map tree structures to colors from the Hue-Chroma-Luminance color model, which is known for its well balanced perceptual properties. The Tree Colors method can be tuned with several parameters, whose effect on the resulting color schemes is discussed in detail. We provide a free and open source implementation with sensible parameter defaults. Categorical data are very common in statistical graphics, and often these categories form a classification tree. We evaluate applying Tree Colors to tree structured data with a survey on a large group of users from a national statistical institute. Our user study suggests that Tree Colors are useful, not only for improving node-link diagrams, but also for unveiling tree structure in non-hierarchical visualizations.
UpSet: Visualization of Intersecting Sets
Authors: Alexander Lex, Nils Gehlenborg, Hendrik Strobelt, Romain Vuillemot, Hanspeter Pfister
Published at InfoVis, 2014

Understanding relationships between sets is an important analysis task that has received widespread attention in the visualization community. The major challenge in this context is the combinatorial explosion of the number of set intersections if the number of sets exceeds a trivial threshold. In this paper we introduce UpSet, a novel visualization technique for the quantitative analysis of sets, their intersections, and aggregates of intersections. UpSet is focused on creating task-driven aggregates, communicating the size and properties of aggregates and intersections, and a duality between the visualization of the elements in a dataset and their set membership. UpSet visualizes set intersections in a matrix layout and introduces aggregates based on groupings and queries. The matrix layout enables the effective representation of associated data, such as the number of elements in the aggregates and intersections, as well as additional summary statistics derived from subset or element attributes. Sorting according to various measures enables a task-driven analysis of relevant intersections and aggregates. The elements represented in the sets and their associated attributes are visualized in a separate view. Queries based on containment in specific intersections, aggregates or driven by attribute filters are propagated between both views. We also introduce several advanced visual encodings and interaction methods to overcome the problems of varying scales and to address scalability. UpSet is web-based and open source. We demonstrate its general utility in multiple use cases from various domains.
Visual Parameter Space Analysis: A Conceptual Framework
Authors: Michael Sedlmair, Christoph Heinzl, Stefan Bruckner, Harald Piringer, Torsten Möller
Published at InfoVis, 2014

Various case studies in different application domains have shown the great potential of visual parameter space analysis to support validating and using simulation models. In order to guide and systematize research endeavors in this area, we provide a conceptual framework for visual parameter space analysis problems. The framework is based on our own experience and a structured analysis of the visualization literature. It contains three major components: (1) a data flow model that helps to abstractly describe visual parameter space analysis problems independent of their application domain; (2) a set of four navigation strategies of how parameter space analysis can be supported by visualization tools; and (3) a characterization of six analysis tasks. Based on our framework, we analyze and classify the current body of literature, and identify three open research gaps in visual parameter space analysis. The framework and its discussion are meant to support visualization designers and researchers in characterizing parameter space analysis problems and to guide their design and evaluation processes.
Visualizing Statistical Mix Effects and Simpson's Paradox
Authors: Zan Armstrong, Martin Wattenberg
Published at InfoVis, 2014

We discuss how “mix effects” can surprise users of visualizations and potentially lead them to incorrect conclusions. This statistical issue (also known as “omitted variable bias” or, in extreme cases, as “Simpson's paradox”) is widespread and can affect any visualization in which the quantity of interest is an aggregated value such as a weighted sum or average. Our first contribution is to document how mix effects can be a serious issue for visualizations, and we analyze how mix effects can cause problems in a variety of popular visualization techniques, from bar charts to treemaps. Our second contribution is a new technique, the “comet chart,” that is meant to ameliorate some of these issues.
4D MRI Flow Coupled to Physics-Based Fluid Simulation for Blood-Flow Visualization
Authors: Niels H. L. C. de Hoon, Roy van Pelt, Andrei C. Jalba, Anna Vilanova
Published at EuroVis, 2014

Modern MRI measurements deliver volumetric and time‐varying blood‐flow data of unprecedented quality. Visual analysis of these data potentially leads to a better diagnosis and risk assessment of various cardiovascular diseases. Recent advances have improved the speed and quality of the imaging data considerably. Nevertheless, the data remains compromised by noise and a lack of spatiotemporal resolution. Besides imaging data, also numerical simulations are employed. These are based on mathematical models of specific features of physical reality. However, these models require realistic parameters and boundary conditions based on measurements. We propose to use data assimilation to bring measured data and physically‐based simulation together, and to harness the mutual benefits. The accuracy and noise robustness of the coupled approach is validated using an analytic flow field. Furthermore, we present a comparative visualization that conveys the differences between using conventional interpolation and our coupled approach.
A Gaze-enabled Graph Visualization to Improve Graph Reading Tasks
Authors: Mershack Okoe, Sayeed Safayet Alam, Radu Jianu
Published at EuroVis, 2014

Performing typical network tasks such as node scanning and path tracing can be difficult in large and dense graphs. To alleviate this problem we use eye‐tracking as an interactive input to detect tasks that users intend to perform and then produce unobtrusive visual changes that support these tasks. First, we introduce a novel fovea based filtering that dims out edges with endpoints far removed from a user's view focus. Second, we highlight edges that are being traced at any given moment or have been the focus of recent attention. Third, we track recently viewed nodes and increase the saliency of their neighborhoods. All visual responses are unobtrusive and easily ignored to avoid unintentional distraction and to account for the imprecise and low‐resolution nature of eye‐tracking. We also introduce a novel gaze‐correction approach that relies on knowledge about the network layout to reduce eye‐tracking error. Finally, we present results from a controlled user study showing that our methods led to a statistically significant accuracy improvement in one of two network tasks and that our gaze‐correction algorithm enables more accurate eye‐tracking interaction.
Authoring Narrative Visualizations with Ellipsis
Authors: Arvind Satyanarayan, Jeffrey Heer
Published at EuroVis, 2014

Data visualization is now a popular medium for journalistic storytelling. However, current visualization tools either lack support for storytelling or require significant technical expertise. Informed by interviews with journalists, we introduce a model of storytelling abstractions that includes state‐based scene structure, dynamic annotations and decoupled coordination of multiple visualization components. We instantiate our model in Ellipsis: a system that combines a domain‐specific language (DSL) for storytelling with a graphical interface for story authoring. User interactions are automatically translated into statements in the Ellipsis DSL. By enabling storytelling without programming, the Ellipsis interface lowers the threshold for authoring narrative visualizations. We evaluate Ellipsis through example applications and user studies with award‐winning journalists. Study participants find Ellipsis to be a valuable prototyping tool that can empower journalists in the creation of interactive narratives.
Comparative Blood Flow Visualization for Cerebral Aneurysm Treatment Assessment
Authors: Roy van Pelt, Rocco Gasteiger, Kai Lawonn, Monique Meuschke, Bernhard Preim
Published at EuroVis, 2014

A pathological vessel dilation in the brain, termed cerebral aneurysm, bears a high risk of rupture, and is associated with a high mortality. In recent years, incidental findings of unruptured aneurysms have become more frequent, mainly due to advances in medical imaging. The pathological condition is often treated with a stent that diverts the blood flow from the aneurysm sac back to the original vessel. Prior to treatment, neuroradiologists need to decide on the optimal stent configuration and judge the long‐term rupture risk, for which blood flow information is essential. Modern patient‐specific simulations can model the hemodynamics for various stent configurations, providing important indicators to support the decision‐making process. However, the necessary visual analysis of these data becomes tedious and time‐consuming, because of the abundance of information. We introduce a comprehensive comparative visualization that integrates morphology with blood flow indicators to facilitate treatment assessment. To deal with the visual complexity, we propose a details‐on‐demand approach, combining established medical visualization techniques with innovative glyphs inspired by information visualization concepts. In an evaluation we have obtained informal feedback from domain experts, gauging the value of our visualization.
Comparative Exploration of Document Collections: a Visual Analytics Approach
Authors: Daniela Oelke, Hendrik Strobelt, Christian Rohrdantz, Iryna Gurevych, Oliver Deussen
Published at EuroVis, 2014

We present an analysis and visualization method for computing what distinguishes a given document collection from others. We determine topics that discriminate a subset of collections from the remaining ones by applying probabilistic topic modeling and subsequently approximating the two relevant criteria distinctiveness and characteristicness algorithmically through a set of heuristics. Furthermore, we suggest a novel visualization method called DiTop‐View, in which topics are represented by glyphs (topic coins) that are arranged on a 2D plane. Topic coins are designed to encode all information necessary for performing comparative analyses such as the class membership of a topic, its most probable terms and the discriminative relations. We evaluate our topic analysis using statistical measures and a small user experiment and present an expert case study with researchers from political sciences analyzing two real‐world datasets.
Comparative Visualization of Molecular Surfaces Using Deformable Models
Authors: Katrin Scharnowski, Michael Krone, Guido Reina, Tobias Kulschewski, Jürgen Pleiss, Thomas Ertl
Published at EuroVis, 2014

The comparison of molecular surface attributes is of interest for computer aided drug design and the analysis of biochemical simulations. Due to the non‐rigid nature of molecular surfaces, partial shape matching is feasible for mapping two surfaces onto each other. We present a novel technique to obtain a mapping relation between two surfaces using a deformable model approach. This relation is used for pair‐wise comparison of local surface attributes (e.g. electrostatic potential). We combine the difference value as well as the comparability as derived from the local matching quality in a 3D molecular visualization by mapping them to color. A 2D matrix shows the global dissimilarity in an overview of different data sets in an ensemble. We apply our visualizations to simulation results provided by collaborators from the field of biochemistry to evaluate the effectiveness of our results.