Browsing by Subject "visual analytics"

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    Concept-Driven Visual Analytics: an Exploratory Study of Model- and Hypothesis-Based Reasoning with Visualizations
    (ACM, 2019-05) Choi, In Kwon; Childers, Taylor; Raveendranath, Nirmal Kumar; Mishra, Swati; Harris, Kyle; Reda, Khairi; Human-Centered Computing, School of Informatics and Computing
    Visualization tools facilitate exploratory data analysis, but fall short at supporting hypothesis-based reasoning. We conducted an exploratory study to investigate how visualizations might support a concept-driven analysis style, where users can optionally share their hypotheses and conceptual models in natural language, and receive customized plots depicting the fit of their models to the data. We report on how participants leveraged these unique affordances for visual analysis. We found that a majority of participants articulated meaningful models and predictions, utilizing them as entry points to sensemaking. We contribute an abstract typology representing the types of models participants held and externalized as data expectations. Our findings suggest ways for rearchitecting visual analytics tools to better support hypothesis- and model-based reasoning, in addition to their traditional role in exploratory analysis. We discuss the design implications and reflect on the potential benefits and challenges involved.
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    Visual (dis)Confirmation: Validating Models and Hypotheses with Visualizations
    (IEEE, 2019-07) Choi, In Kwon; Raveendranath, Nirmal Kumar; Westerfield, Jared; Reda, Khairi; Human-Centered Computing, School of Informatics and Computing
    Data visualization provides a powerful way for analysts to explore and make data-driven discoveries. However, current visual analytic tools provide only limited support for hypothesis-driven inquiry, as their built-in interactions and workflows are primarily intended for exploratory analysis. Visualization tools notably lack capabilities that would allow users to visually and incrementally test the fit of their conceptual models and provisional hypotheses against the data. This imbalance could bias users to overly rely on exploratory analysis as the principal mode of inquiry, which can be detrimental to discovery. In this paper, we introduce Visual (dis) Confirmation, a tool for conducting confirmatory, hypothesis-driven analyses with visualizations. Users interact by framing hypotheses and data expectations in natural language. The system then selects conceptually relevant data features and automatically generates visualizations to validate the underlying expectations. Distinctively, the resulting visualizations also highlight places where one's mental model disagrees with the data, so as to stimulate reflection. The proposed tool represents a new class of interactive data systems capable of supporting confirmatory visual analysis, and responding more intelligently by spotlighting gaps between one's knowledge and the data. We describe the algorithmic techniques behind this workflow. We also demonstrate the utility of the tool through a case study.