CGV: Small: Creating Information Visualizations without Programming

越来越多的人和组织发现自己被数据淹没。几乎每个领域都受到我们日益强大的监控和记录任何相关数据的能力的影响。毫不奇怪，更好地理解数据和与他人交流的强烈愿望伴随着这种广泛的访问。可视化是一种对数据分析和呈现特别有效的技术。以可视化方式表示数据及其属性的能力通常允许人们更容易地掌握数据的重要特征，并对其价值得出结论。类似地，人们在向他人解释数据时，通常更喜欢以可视化的方式表示数据。不幸的是，今天要创建数据可视化，一个人要么需要是一个程序员，并使用为此目的开发的库和工具包，要么需要使用（通常是商业）提供有限的视觉表示的系统。这两种解决方案都不适合不是程序员的数据科学家，他们寻求为他们探索的数据的独特方面设计自定义可视化。 这项研究正在开发新的方法来创建可视化，而不需要使用编程。研究的第一步是确定数据可视化过程的核心原语，包括表示和交互。这项研究还制定了一个理论和模型，如何表示这些原语，使人们可以很容易地指定他们的设计意图，从而提供了一个表达框架，构建可视化。 最终，该框架体现通过开发一个原型可视化建设系统，使用户能够创建自定义的可视化。对原语、概念框架和系统的有效性的评估完成了该项目。该项目的结果预计将在各种领域和应用中产生广泛的影响。当来自新闻、商业、科学和健康等各个领域的人们能够快速开发数据的可视化时，学科本身将受益于更强的分析数据和从数据中传达知识的能力。无需编程即可构建可视化的能力也使尚未学习计算机科学的年轻学生能够从事数据分析和可视化设计。这项研究将为当地高中和学生创建有关可视化和数据分析的学习模块，旨在培养学生对数据科学，可视化和人机交互等领域的兴趣。此外，该项目还为研究生提供教育和研究经验。最近值得注意的国家研究议程已经确定，需要更多的学生和年轻研究人员接受STEM相关学科的培训。由此产生的可视化构建系统将在互联网上免费提供给任何人使用。 所有研究结果将通过学术场所和公众可访问的网站（http：//www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/ii/designvis）进行传播。

An ever-growing number of people and organizations find themselves awash in data. Virtually every domain has been affected by our increasingly powerful ability to monitor and record any kind of data that might be relevant. Unsurprisingly, a strong desire to better understand the data and communicate to others has accompanied this widespread access. Visualization is one technique that can be particularly effective for data analysis and presentation. The ability to represent data and its attributes in a visual manner often allows people to more easily grasp important characteristics of the data and to reach conclusions about its value. Similarly, people frequently prefer to represent data visually when explaining it to others. Unfortunately, to create a data visualization today, a person either needs to be a programmer and use libraries and toolkits developed for that purpose or the person needs to use (typically commercial) systems that provide limited visual representations. Neither solution is appropriate for data scientists who are not programmers but seek to design custom visualizations for the unique aspects of the data they explore. This research is developing new methods of creating visualizations without requiring the use of programming. An initial step of the research is identifying the core primitives of the data visualization process, both with respect to representation and interaction. The research is also formulating a theory and model of how to represent these primitives so that people can easily specify their design intent, thus providing an expressive framework for constructing visualizations. Ultimately, the framework is embodied through the development of a prototype visualization construction system that empowers users to create custom visualizations. Evaluations of the effectiveness of the primitives, the conceptual framework, and system complete the project.The results of this project are expected to have broad impacts in a variety of domains and applications. When people from a variety of fields such as journalism, business, science, and health are able to rapidly develop visualizations of their data, the disciplines themselves will benefit from stronger abilities to analyze data and communicate knowledge from the data. The ability to construct visualizations without programming also enables younger students who have not yet studied computer science to engage in data analysis and visualization design. This research will create learning modules about visualization and data analysis for local high schools and students with a goal to grow interest within the students for areas such as data science, visualization, and human-computer interaction. Additionally, this project provides education and research experience for graduate students. Recent noteworthy national research agendas have identified the need for more students and young researchers trained in STEM-related disciplines. The resulting visualization construction system being created will be freely available on the internet for anyone to use. All results of the research will be communicated through academic venues and the publicly-accessible website (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/ii/designvis).