The Value of Information Visualization
Data is everywhere. It helps us to make informed decisions. However, it is always overwhelming to interpret the “raw” data. Visualizations are tools that translate the raw data into meaningful graphics. They take advantage of the powerful human visual system to summarize data in a cognitively efficient way, making them popular in science, analysis, and the media.
Many existing visualizations have been designed, including more standard ones, like https://observablehq.com/@d3/gallery, and more creative ones, like https://xeno.graphics/.
However, fulfilling the diverse human-data interaction requirements of different end users is still challenging. One key overarching goal of visualization research is to build novel visualization and interaction techniques to better support data exploration and analytics.
Building upon this high-level objective, the premier conference in visualization (IEEE VIS) further defined six visualization research areas:
https://ieeevis.org/year/2023/info/call-participation/call-for-participation
This course aims to provide the enrolled students with a complete visualization research experience.
This is a research-oriented course specifically focusing on visualization. We expect you to have experience building visualizations or user interfaces, for example, using JavaScript/CSS/HTML to build a webpage, using Unity3D to build a game, or having similar experiences or skills.
Specifically, experience in using visualization tools (e.g., d3js) is preferred and oftentimes necessary to build your research prototypes. CS 5764 - Information Visualization covers a good depth of such content. The exact tools you need to use will depend on the project you want to develop. For example, Unity3D/WebVR (instead of d3js) will be needed if you intend to build interactive visualizations in VR/AR.
<aside> 💡 Students who enroll without meeting these prerequisites may need to invest significantly more time in self-study and practice to complete the research project.
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Instructor: Yalong Yang
Email: [email protected]
Office: 1121 Knowledge Works II, 2202 Kraft Drive
Office hours: Tue 4-5 pm