Field Of Visual Analytics Research Articles

Interactive visual query of density maps on latent space via flow‐based models

AbstractVisual querying of spatiotemporal data has become a dominant mode in the field of visual analytics. Previous studies have utilized well‐designed data structures to speed up the querying of spatiotemporal data. However, reducing storage overhead while improving the querying efficiency of data distribution remains a significant challenge. We propose a flow‐based neural representation method for efficient visual querying. First, we transform spatiotemporal data into density maps through kernel density estimation. Then, we leverage the data‐driven modeling capabilities of a flow‐based neural network to achieve a highly latent representation of the data. Various computations and queries can be performed on the latent representation to improve querying efficiency. Our experiments demonstrate that our approach achieves competitive results in visually querying spatiotemporal data in terms of storage overhead and real‐time interaction efficiency.

VA + Embeddings STAR: A State‐of‐the‐Art Report on the Use of Embeddings in Visual Analytics

AbstractOver the past years, an increasing number of publications in information visualization, especially within the field of visual analytics, have mentioned the term “embedding” when describing the computational approach. Within this context, embeddings are usually (relatively) low‐dimensional, distributed representations of various data types (such as texts or graphs), and since they have proven to be extremely useful for a variety of data analysis tasks across various disciplines and fields, they have become widely used. Existing visualization approaches aim to either support exploration and interpretation of the embedding space through visual representation and interaction, or aim to use embeddings as part of the computational pipeline for addressing downstream analytical tasks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey that takes a detailed look at embedding methods through the lens of visual analytics, and the purpose of our survey article is to provide a systematic overview of the state of the art within the emerging field of embedding visualization. We design a categorization scheme for our approach, analyze the current research frontier based on peer‐reviewed publications, and discuss existing trends, challenges, and potential research directions for using embeddings in the context of visual analytics. Furthermore, we provide an interactive survey browser for the collected and categorized survey data, which currently includes 122 entries that appeared between 2007 and 2023.

It's about Time: Analytical Time Periodization

AbstractThis paper presents a novel approach to the problem of time periodization, which involves dividing the time span of a complex dynamic phenomenon into periods that enclose different relatively stable states or development trends. The challenge lies in finding such a division of the time that takes into account diverse behaviours of multiple components of the phenomenon while being simple and easy to interpret. Despite the importance of this problem, it has not received sufficient attention in the fields of visual analytics and data science. We use a real‐world example from aviation and an additional usage scenario on analysing mobility trends during the COVID‐19 pandemic to develop and test an analytical workflow that combines computational and interactive visual techniques. We highlight the differences between the two cases and show how they affect the use of different techniques. Through our investigation of possible variations in the time periodization problem, we discuss the potential of our approach to be used in various applications. Our contributions include defining and investigating an earlier neglected problem type, developing a practical and reproducible approach to solving problems of this type, and uncovering potential for formalization and development of computational methods.

Mixed Reality Based Visual Analytics

Having a novel human-computer interaction mode, mixed reality expands the design space of visualization and interactive interface, confirming itself a broad application prospect. Recently, mixed reality technologies have undergone rapid developments, and many researchers have applied it into the field of visual analytics. In this situation, first the concept and current developments of mixed reality are introduced, the differences between the mixed reality environment and the traditional interactive environment from aspects of display and interaction are discussed, the advantages and limitations of mixed reality visual analytics are analyzed, and related research projects are presented. In addition, based on the three application scenarios of mixed reality visual analytics, the augmenting visualization, the situated analytics, and the collaborative analytics, current works of the mixed reality visual analysis application are also introduced. Finally, current progress are summarized and the opportunities and challenges of mixed reality visual analytics are discussed.

Exploration and Assessment of Interaction in an Immersive Analytics Module: A Software-Based Comparison

The focus of computer systems in the field of visual analytics is to make the results clear and understandable. However, enhancing human-computer interaction (HCI) in the field is less investigated. Data visualization and visual analytics (VA) are usually performed using traditional desktop settings and mouse interaction. These methods are based on the window, icon, menu, and pointer (WIMP) interface, which often results in information clutter and is difficult to analyze and understand, especially by novice users. Researchers believe that introducing adequate, natural interaction techniques to the field is necessary for building effective and enjoyable visual analytics systems. This work introduces a novel virtual reality (VR) module to perform basic visual analytics tasks and aims to explore new interaction techniques in the field. A pilot study was conducted to measure the time it takes students to perform basic tasks for analytics using the developed VR module and compares it to the time it takes them to perform the same tasks using a traditional desktop to assess the effectiveness of the VR module in enhancing student’s performance. The results show that novice users (Participants with less programming experience) took about 50% less time to complete tasks using the developed VR module as a comrade to a programming language, notably R. Experts (Participants with advanced programming experience) took about the same time to complete tasks under both conditions (R and VR).

A survey of visual analytics for Explainable Artificial Intelligence methods

Deep learning (DL) models have achieved impressive performance in various domains such as medicine, finance, and autonomous vehicle systems with advances in computing power and technologies. However, due to the black-box structure of DL models, the decisions of these learning models often need to be explained to end-users. Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) provides explanations of black-box models to reveal the behavior and underlying decision-making mechanisms of the models through tools, techniques, and algorithms. Visualization techniques help to present model and prediction explanations in a more understandable, explainable, and interpretable way. This survey paper aims to review current trends and challenges of visual analytics in interpreting DL models by adopting XAI methods and present future research directions in this area. We reviewed literature based on two different aspects, model usage and visual approaches. We addressed several research questions based on our findings and then discussed missing points, research gaps, and potential future research directions. This survey provides guidelines to develop a better interpretation of neural networks through XAI methods in the field of visual analytics.

DRLViz: Understanding Decisions and Memory in Deep Reinforcement Learning

AbstractWe present DRLViz, a visual analytics interface to interpret the internal memory of an agent (e.g. a robot) trained using deep reinforcement learning. This memory is composed of large temporal vectors updated when the agent moves in an environment and is not trivial to understand due to the number of dimensions, dependencies to past vectors, spatial/temporal correlations, and co‐correlation between dimensions. It is often referred to as a black box as only inputs (images) and outputs (actions) are intelligible for humans. Using DRLViz, experts are assisted to interpret decisions using memory reduction interactions, and to investigate the role of parts of the memory when errors have been made (e.g. wrong direction). We report on DRLViz applied in the context of video games simulators (ViZDoom) for a navigation scenario with item gathering tasks. We also report on experts evaluation using DRLViz, and applicability of DRLViz to other scenarios and navigation problems beyond simulation games, as well as its contribution to black box models interpretability and explain‐ability in the field of visual analytics.

Guide Me in Analysis: A Framework for Guidance Designers.

Guidance is an emerging topic in the field of visual analytics. Guidance can support users in pursuing their analytical goals more efficiently and help in making the analysis successful. However, it is not clear how guidance approaches should be designed and what specific factors should be considered for effective support. In this paper, we approach this problem from the perspective of guidance designers. We present a framework comprising requirements and a set of specific phases designers should go through when designing guidance for visual analytics. We relate this process with a set of quality criteria we aim to support with our framework, that are necessary for obtaining a suitable and effective guidance solution. To demonstrate the practical usability of our methodology, we apply our framework to the design of guidance in three analysis scenarios and a design walk‐through session. Moreover, we list the emerging challenges and report how the framework can be used to design guidance solutions that mitigate these issues.

Interactive visualization of big data in the field of accounting

Purpose Big Data introduces high amounts and new forms of structured, unstructured and semi-structured data into the field of accounting and this requires alternative data management and reporting methods. Generating insights from these new data sources highlight the need for different and interactive forms of visualization in the field of visual analytics. Nonetheless, a considerable gap between the recommendations in research and the current usage in practice is evident. In order to understand and overcome this gap, a detailed analysis of the status quo as well as the identification of potential barriers for adoption is vital. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach A survey with 145 business accountants from Austrian companies from a wide array of business sectors and all hierarchy levels has been conducted. The survey is targeted toward the purpose of this study: identifying barriers, clustered as human-related and technological-related, as well as investigating current practice with respect to interactive visualization use for Big Data. Findings The lack of knowledge and experience regarding new visualization types and interaction techniques and the sole focus on Microsoft Excel as a visualization tool can be identified as the main barriers, while the use of multiple data sources and the gradual implementation of further software tools determine the first drivers of adoption. Research limitations/implications Due to the data collection with a standardized survey, there was no possibility of dealing with participants individually, which could lead to a misinterpretation of the given answers. Further, the sample population is Austrian, which might cause issues in terms of generalizing results to other geographical or cultural heritages. Practical implications The study shows that those knowledgeable and familiar with interactive Big Data visualizations indicate high perceived ease of use. It is, therefore, necessary to offer sufficient training as well as user-centered visualizations and technological support to further increase usage within the accounting profession. Originality/value A lot of research has been dedicated to the introduction of novel forms of interactive visualizations. However, little focus has been laid on the impact of these new tools for Big Data from a practitioner’s perspective and their needs.

High-Dimensional Multivariate Time Series Data Visualization Using an Open Source Framework

Multivariate Time Series plays a major part in statistics, signal processing, pattern recognition, econometrics, weather forecasting and earthquake prediction etc. It is very tedious task to select the appropriate technique to visualize the high-dimensional data in order to get insight or meaningful information. In this paper, we used an Open Source package named as Visbrain to visualize high-dimensional multivariate healthcare data in optimized way. It involves two dimensions of reflection: (1) questions that speak to exceedingly configurable visual natives (availability of EEG and ECG sources, and so forth.) and (2) graphical UIs for more elevated amount connections. The article level offers adaptable and measured devices for delivering and computerizing the generation of numbers with a comparative way to deal with that of Matplotlib with subplots. The second dimension outwardly associates these articles by controlling properties and communications by means of graphical interfaces. The present form of Visbrain (rendition 0.4.4) contains 14 distinct items and three custom graphical interfaces, worked with PyQt: Signal, for the control of fleeting and ghostly properties. Every module has been created in close cooperation with end clients, mostly neuroscientists and area specialists, who utilize their experience to make Visbrain as straightforward as feasible for the chronicle modalities (eg intracranial EEG, ECG, scalp EEG, MEG, anatomical and useful MRI). The paper disscuses the features and various modules for current understanding research trends in the field of Visual Analytics.

Visual Analytics: A Comprehensive Overview

With the ever-increasing amount of data, the world has stepped into the era of “Big Data”. Presently, the analysis of massive and complex data and the extraction of relevant information, have been become essential tasks in many fields of studies, such as health, biology, chemistry, social science, astronomy, and physics. However, compared with the development of data storage and management technologies, our ability to gain useful information from the collected data does not match our ability to collect the data. This gap has led to a surge of research activity in the field of visual analytics. Visual analytics employs interactive visualization to integrate human judgment into algorithmic data-analysis processes. In this paper, the aim is to draw a complete picture of visual analytics to direct future research by examining the related research in various application domains. As such, a novel categorization of visual-analytics applications from a technical perspective is proposed, which is based on the dimensionality of visualization and the type of interaction. Based on this categorization, a comprehensive survey of visual analytics is performed, which examines its evolution from visualization and algorithmic data analysis, and investigates how it is applied in various application domains. In addition, based on the observations and findings gained in this survey, the trends, major challenges, and future directions of visual analytics are discussed.

Visual Analytics for the Representation, Exploration, and Analysis of High-Dimensional, Multi-faceted Medical Data.

Medicine is among those research fields with a significant impact on humans and their health. Already for decades, medicine has established a tight coupling with the visualization domain, proving the importance of developing visualization techniques, designed exclusively for this research discipline. However, medical data is steadily increasing in complexity with the appearance of heterogeneous, multi-modal, multi-parametric, cohort or population, as well as uncertain data. To deal with this kind of complex data, the field of Visual Analytics has emerged. In this chapter, we discuss the many dimensions and facets of medical data. Based on this classification, we provide a general overview of state-of-the-art visualization systems and solutions dealing with high-dimensional, multi-faceted data. Our particular focus will be on multi-modal, multi-parametric data, on data from cohort or population studies and on uncertain data, especially with respect to Visual Analytics applications for the representation, exploration, and analysis of high-dimensional, multi-faceted medical data.

Recent research advances on interactive machine learning

Interactive Machine Learning (IML) is an iterative learning process that tightly couples a human with a machine learner, which is widely used by researchers and practitioners to effectively solve a wide variety of real-world application problems. Although recent years have witnessed the proliferation of IML in the field of visual analytics, most recent surveys either focus on a specific area of IML or aim to summarize a visualization field that is too generic for IML. In this paper, we systematically review the recent literature on IML and classify them into a task-oriented taxonomy built by us. We conclude the survey with a discussion of open challenges and research opportunities that we believe are inspiring for future work in IML.

MCLEAN: Multilevel Clustering Exploration As Network.

Finding useful patterns in datasets has attracted considerable interest in the field of visual analytics. One of the most common tasks is the identification and representation of clusters. However, this is non-trivial in heterogeneous datasets since the data needs to be analyzed from different perspectives. Indeed, highly variable patterns may mask underlying trends in the dataset. Dendrograms are graphical representations resulting from agglomerative hierarchical clustering and provide a framework for viewing the clustering at different levels of detail. However, dendrograms become cluttered when the dataset gets large, and the single cut of the dendrogram to demarcate different clusters can be insufficient in heterogeneous datasets. In this work, we propose a visual analytics methodology called MCLEAN that offers a general approach for guiding the user through the exploration and detection of clusters. Powered by a graph-based transformation of the relational data, it supports a scalable environment for representation of heterogeneous datasets by changing the spatialization. We thereby combine multilevel representations of the clustered dataset with community finding algorithms. Our approach entails displaying the results of the heuristics to users, providing a setting from which to start the exploration and data analysis. To evaluate our proposed approach, we conduct a qualitative user study, where participants are asked to explore a heterogeneous dataset, comparing the results obtained by MCLEAN with the dendrogram. These qualitative results reveal that MCLEAN is an effective way of aiding users in the detection of clusters in heterogeneous datasets. The proposed methodology is implemented in an R package available at https://bitbucket.org/vda-lab/mclean.

Wavelet-Based Visual Analysis of Dynamic Networks.

Dynamic networks naturally appear in a multitude of applications from different fields. Analyzing and exploring dynamic networks in order to understand and detect patterns and phenomena is challenging, fostering the development of new methodologies, particularly in the field of visual analytics. In this work, we propose a novel visual analytics methodology for dynamic networks, which relies on the spectral graph wavelet theory. We enable the automatic analysis of a signal defined on the nodes of the network, making viable the robust detection of network properties. Specifically, we use a fast approximation of a graph wavelet transform to derive a set of wavelet coefficients, which are then used to identify activity patterns on large networks, including their temporal recurrence. The coefficients naturally encode the spatial and temporal variations of the signal, leading to an efficient and meaningful representation. This methodology allows for the exploration of the structural evolution of the network and their patterns over time. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated using usage scenarios and comparisons involving real dynamic networks.

An Evaluation of a Visual Analytics Prototype for Calendar-Related Spatiotemporal Periodicity Detection and Analysis

Whether it is sunrise, the weekend, or Christmas, some form of temporal structure or periodic pattern governs our daily activities. Understanding them is essential to making sense of human activity, because they frame normality and allow us to identify abnormalities. However, cultural heterogeneity and scale greatly complicate our ability to uncover and understand human activity at a given time within a region. Current research in the field of visual analytics and geography provide methods of addressing spatiotemporal periodicity, but they fall short in providing access to multiple spatial and temporal scales via a relevant calendar. In response to these shortcomings, we developed PerSE (periodicity in spatiotemporal events), a coordinated-view Web application designed to aid users in the detection and analysis of calendar-related periodicity in spatiotemporal event data sets. Given the complexity of such a visualization tool, this paper focuses on the usability and learnability of PerSE. We evaluated the tool through a 20-participant study that consisted of training, a multiple-choice test, and the System Usability Scale. Our analysis of the results shows that the complex combination of visual tools and multi-scale, multi-calendar capability used within PerSE is effective, but still in need of usability improvements.

The Role of Teamwork in the Analysis of Big Data: A Study of Visual Analytics and Box Office Prediction.

Historically, domains such as business intelligence would require a single analyst to engage with data, develop a model, answer operational questions, and predict future behaviors. However, as the problems and domains become more complex, organizations are employing teams of analysts to explore and model data to generate knowledge. Furthermore, given the rapid increase in data collection, organizations are struggling to develop practices for intelligence analysis in the era of big data. Currently, a variety of machine learning and data mining techniques are available to model data and to generate insights and predictions, and developments in the field of visual analytics have focused on how to effectively link data mining algorithms with interactive visuals to enable analysts to explore, understand, and interact with data and data models. Although studies have explored the role of single analysts in the visual analytics pipeline, little work has explored the role of teamwork and visual analytics in the analysis of big data. In this article, we present an experiment integrating statistical models, visual analytics techniques, and user experiments to study the role of teamwork in predictive analytics. We frame our experiment around the analysis of social media data for box office prediction problems and compare the prediction performance of teams, groups, and individuals. Our results indicate that a team's performance is mediated by the team's characteristics such as openness of individual members to others' positions and the type of planning that goes into the team's analysis. These findings have important implications for how organizations should create teams in order to make effective use of information from their analytic models.

Visual analytics of educational time‐dependent data using interactive dynamic visualization

AbstractA major challenge in the modern educational research is the large amount of time‐dependent data, which requires suitable methods to provide an efficient decision making. The fields of visual analytics and interactive visualization can help to cope with the related issues by involving the analyst in the exploration process. The time is an important variable that needs to be modeled in visual analytics. Methods like motion charts show the changes over time by presenting animations in the two‐dimensional space and by changing the element appearances. In this paper, we present a novel web‐based visual analytics framework, which is primarily designed for exploratory analysis of academic analytics and employs a combination of improved motion charts methods, trajectory‐based visualizations, and automated analytic methods for the purpose of analyzing data elements based on their relations with the time dimension and examining data dynamics. We evaluate the usefulness and the general applicability of the framework with a controlled experiment to assess the efficacy of the methods. To interpret the experiment results, we utilize one‐way repeated measures analysis of variance. Also, a questionnaire survey with experts was conducted to evaluate the usability of the methods.

Characterizing Provenance in Visualization and Data Analysis: An Organizational Framework of Provenance Types and Purposes

While the primary goal of visual analytics research is to improve the quality of insights and findings, a substantial amount of research in provenance has focused on the history of changes and advances throughout the analysis process. The term, provenance, has been used in a variety of ways to describe different types of records and histories related to visualization. The existing body of provenance research has grown to a point where the consolidation of design knowledge requires cross-referencing a variety of projects and studies spanning multiple domain areas. We present an organizational framework of the different types of provenance information and purposes for why they are desired in the field of visual analytics. Our organization is intended to serve as a framework to help researchers specify types of provenance and coordinate design knowledge across projects. We also discuss the relationships between these factors and the methods used to capture provenance information. In addition, our organization can be used to guide the selection of evaluation methodology and the comparison of study outcomes in provenance research.

Tool Capability in Visual EAM Analytics

Enterprise Architectures (EA) consist of a multitude of architecture elements, which relate in manifold ways to each other. As the change of a single element hence impacts various other elements, mechanisms for architecture analysis are important to stakeholders. The high number of relationships aggravates architecture analysis and makes it a complex yet important task. In practice EAs are often analyzed using visualizations. This article contributes to the field of visual analytics in enterprise architecture management (EAM) by reviewing how state-of-the-art software platforms in EAM support stakeholders with respect to providing and visualizing the “right” information for decision-making tasks. We investigate the collaborative decision-making process in an experiment with master students using professional EAM tools by developing a research study. We evaluate the students’ findings by comparing them with the experience of an enterprise architect.