Title: Visualization by Demonstration

Bahador Saket

Ph.D. Student

School of Interactive Computing

College of Computing

Georgia Institute of Technology

Date: Monday, May 23, 2018

Time: 10 AM to 12 PM EDT

Location: TSRB 223

Committee

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Dr. Alex Endert, School of Interactive Computing (Advisor)

Dr. John Stasko, School of Interactive Computing 

Dr. Keith Edwards, School of Interactive Computing

Dr. Rahul Basole, School of Interactive Computing

Dr. Niklas Elmqvist, University of Maryland, College Park

Abstract

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Interactivity can be added to data visualizations to enable users to gain insight into large, complex datasets. The ultimate goal of many of interactive data visualization tools is to enable users to explore their data visually through an iterative process, without requiring them to program. A majority of the existing data visualization tools enable users to interact with control panels, dropdown menus, and check boxes to inject their questions and hypotheses about the data. This has been a really powerful way to incorporate users into visual data exploration process. However, visualization tools are getting more advanced and complicated. As functionality grows, the naive approach of making more control panels, additional menus, and longer drop-down lists of choices does not scale. Thus, we need to investigate incorporating other interaction paradigms to data visualization tools. 

In my research, I am investigating a novel interaction paradigm for visual data exploration called ``visualization by demonstration'’. Through this work, I define principles of visualization by demonstration and indicate the feasibility of this interaction paradigm for visual data exploration. I also provide empirical evidences describing the trade-offs of the visualization by demonstration. In my work, I indicate how visualization by demonstration can enable healthcare domain experts to perform real world tasks such as data grouping. Finally, I design and develop a toolkit that enables developers to incorporate visualization by demonstration into their interfaces.