Past Events

Speaker:
Silvia Miksch

A Mixed-Initiative Process for Enhanced Problem-Solving and Understanding

Visual Analytics, as ”the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces”, aims to enable the exploration and understanding of large and complex data sets by intertwining interactive visualization, data analysis, human-computer interaction, and cognitive and perceptual science. At this, human abilities as well as users' needs and tasks are central issues to assist in situations where complex decisions need to be made. A mixed-initiative process is an approach where both humans/users and systems can “take the initiative” and both contribute to the process.  Such a mixed-initiative process could be utilized for enhanced problem-solving and comprehensive understanding.
In this talk, I will illustrate the concepts of guidance-enriched and knowledge-assisted Visual Analytics seen as a mixed-initiative process.  I will address three key questions: “what” is visualized, “why” is it visualized, and “how” it is visualized. Various examples (taken from health care/medicine, cultural heritage, art history, and financial sectors) will exemplify what has been achieved so far and show possible future directions and challenges.  Data and information are a broad field – I will focus particularly on the temporal, spatial, and spatial-temporal dimensions as well as networks and uncertainty.

Silvia Miksch is Full University Professor at  the Vienna University of Technology, leading the Centre for Visual Analytics Science and Technology (CVAST).