Leveraging Visual Cognition in Data Visualization

Visualizations allow analysts to rapidly explore and make sense of their data. The ways we visualize data directly influence the conclusions we draw and decisions we make; however, our knowledge of how visualization design influences data analysis is largely grounded in heuristics and intuition. My research instead empirically models how people interpret visualized data to understand limitations in current visualization systems. We use these results to develop novel visualization systems that support accurate analysis of complex data and better scale to the needs of modern analytics challenges by incorporating interactive statistical analytics and immersive display technologies to increase the accessibility, scalability, and pervasiveness of data-driven reasoning. In this talk, I will discuss our efforts towards improving exploratory data analysis guidelines and tools across a variety of domains.