Frontiers of Visualization Workshop II: Data Wrangling

Web-based Event, October 18, 2017

The second Frontiers of Visualization workshop was a three-hour web-based event that featured presentations by guest experts JoAnn Kuchera-Morin of University of California, Irvine, and Kelly Gaither of University of Texas, Austin. Panelists were chosen in advance to share their responses to each presentation and help lead Q&A discussions involving all participants.

In the first session, JoAnn Kuchera-Morin described her work at the AlloSphere Research Facility, and used the video AlloSphere to demonstrate how her team uses the facility to develop interactive multimodal representations of data. She spoke of the need for artists and computer scientists to work directly with domain experts to create effective multisensory representations of data that can be understood and explored by humans.

In the second session, Kelly Gaither presented Science in the Trenches: Why Data Wrangling and Visualization are Crucial. She discussed the evolution of visualization over the course of her career. She indicated that in the mid-to-late 1990s the struggle was memory wrangling rather than data wrangling. The mid-2000s saw the rise of larger datasets and distributed computing. This led to an increasing need for collaboration, and domain experts could no longer “throw data over the fence and wait for magic to happen.” Dr. Gaither stated that 95% of the effort to create visualizations today is in data cleaning and preparation, the so called “wrangling,” and that conversely, visualization is one of the most important tools for that process. To demonstrate the challenges in visualizing big data, she used the example of electronic health records and related health data.

Presentations

  • “Science in the Trenches: Why Data Wrangling and Visualization are Crucial”, Kelly Gaither – slides
  • “Stunning data visualization in the AlloSphere”, JoAnn Kuchera-Morin – video

 


Frontiers of Visualization Workshop I

National Science Foundation, May 2, 2014

The Human Computer Interaction & Information Management (HCI&IM) Coordinating Group (CG) hosted a “Frontiers of Visualization” meeting on Friday, May 2, 2014, at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Arlington, VA.

The purpose of this meeting was to bring together networking and information technology professionals with specializations ranging from art and design to statistics to hear about their current and planned use(s) of visualization technologies in addition to their achievements and challenges. Attendees also participated in discussions surrounding issues related to visualization in decision making, cognition, and the future of visualization research. The goal of the HCI&IM CG is to establish a baseline of the current visualization standards and practices, the work in the field, and the research left to be accomplished.

Agenda & Participant List

Presentations

  • “Big Data Visualization for Decision Support”, Peter Bajcsy – slides
  • “Biomedical Computing and Visualization”, Chris Johnson – slidesvideo
  • “Challenges and Opportunities of Visualizing NASA’s Earth Observations”, Ryan Boller – slides
  • “Doing Data Visualization”, Jonathan Schwabish – slidesvideo
  • “Frontiers of Visualization: Cisco Systems”, Rachael Brady – slidesvideo
  • “Frontiers of Visualization: Kitware”, Jeff Baumes – slidesvideo
  • “Frontiers of Visualization: Los Alamos national Laboratory”, James Ahrens – slidesvideo
  • “Frontiers of Visualization: Passions, Challenges and Wishes”, Bernice Rogowitz – slidesvideo
  • “Frontiers of Visualization: TACC”, Kelly Gaither – slides
  • “Frontiers of Visualization: University of Maryland”, Ben Shneiderman – slidesvideo
  • “Frontiers of Visualization: University of Texas”, Francesca Samsel – slidesvideo
  • “Next Century Corporation”, Todd Hughes – slides
  • “NITRD – Frontiers in Visualization”, John Stasko – slidesvideo
  • “NITRD – Frontiers of Visualization”, Claudio Silva – slidesvideo
  • “NITRD – Frontiers in Visualization”, Hanspeter Pfister – slides
  • “Scientific Visualization Then and Now”, Kenneth Moreland – slidesvideo
  • “The Information Visualization MOOC, Plug-and-Play Macroscopes, Mapping Science Exhibit”, Katy Borner – slides
  • “Visualization of Complex Data”, Nathalie Riche – slidesvideo
  • “Visual Computing for Big Data”, Amitabh Varshney – slides
  • “Who are you and what are you doing with visualization?”, Richard Marciano – slidesvideo

Breakout Assignments

Meeting Summary