Research Grant Success

Cagatay Turkay has been awarded a prestigious grant by The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under their First-Grant scheme. The funding is for the project titled “NlViS: Natural Language Interaction for Visual Data Analysis” that will commence September 2017 for a duration of 18 months until February 2019.

The project will investigate ways to advance exploratory data analysis methodologies through novel combinations of interactive visualisations and natural language understanding. The project will be asking fundamental questions on how analysts make inferences from visual representations to develop an in-depth understanding of how exploratory visual data analysis processes are executed. Further details of the project can be found on the project page.

Rewiring science-policy with visual information design

Jason Dykes has co-authored a piece on the role of visualization in developing policy from scientific findings with Owen Gaffney of the Future Earth Media Lab, Greg McInerny of the University of Warwick, Denise Young of the International Council For Science and Marian Dörk of Potsdam University of Applied Sciences.

The article presents arguments for increasing communication between scientists policy makers and designers and supporting mechanisms both for achieving this and developing visual literacy. It contains links to some interesting visualization examples.

The ideas came out of Greg's excellent multi-disciplinary EcoViz working group on science, technology and design.

Prize for Pressing Poster

As Juergen Klopp's high tempo counter-pressing strategy shoots Liverpool FC towards the top of the Premier League, Gennady and Natalia have been awarded the Best Poster Award at VAST 2016 for their work on Exploring Pressure in Football.

Their collaboration with the DFL (Deutsche Fussball Liga) generates new statistics on pressing and visualizes these as they evolve through a match and across the pitch. The graphics enable football analysts to interact with the data and explore the patterns of pressing - with Klopp's former charges at Borussia Dortmund the focus of some of the Andrienko's research.

A full paper describing the work has been conditionally accepted for the journal Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery and should appear early next year. By which time, Liverpool may be flying even higher in the league table?

Tour de TypeFace

A few of us headed to the Ditchling Museum of Art+Craft to see the  Underground Exhibition on Edward Johnston's calligraphy.

We cycled as a nice day was forecast and it's and National Cycle Challenge month and CITY has entered.

We took in much of the London-Brighton route, enjoyed high tide and stormy seas along the Undercliff between Brighton and Rottingdean and ended up at the beach in the evening.

Visual Analytics Award

Jo Wood has won an award for Outstanding Presentation of Patterns in Context in the VAST Challenge 2016 - Mini Challenge 2.

Jo developed visual analytics methods to show patterns in a steady stream of simulated operations data. These include smart building sensor data and locations recorded by 'prox cards' that monitor the movement of staff members in a 3-storey building. The analysis is intended to identify security issues and safeguard employees and demonstrates the kind of interactive designs or analysis that we produce at the giCentre.

Click to see the Visual Analytics approach described in a short video ...

Click to see the Visual Analytics approach described in a short video ...

Jo's specific approach is explained in a short video and his results will be presented, and award  received, at the IEEE VIS conference in Baltimore in October 2016.

Data Driven Storytelling

Jo Wood and Jason Dykes attended Dagstuhl 16061 on Data Driven Storytelling.

The meeting was coordinated by Sheelagh Carpendale (University of Calgary, CA), Nick Diakopoulos (University of Maryland, US), Nathalie Henry Riche (Microsoft Research, US) and Christophe Hurter (ENAC, FR) - all on the front row. It brought together key researchers in visualization and journalism from academic and industry.

Jo presented his work on the One Year Time Trial including his graphic depiction of Steve Abrahams' year of day and night riding.

Jason presented some ideas on self-expanatory exploratory interfaces, though he was better at producing examples of bad cases of various forms than good ones.

Participants in the Data Driven Storytelling workshop, Dagstuhl February 2016.