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We are pleased to welcome Uta Hinrichs from the SACHI Group, University of St Andrews as invited speaker on October 23, 2017. She will give a talk about “Visualization as a Process”. 

Abstract:

Over the years, building visualizations has become a process that a wide variety of people engage in independent of their background. People build sophisticated visualizations of their personal data, and it is hard to imagine any discipline that does not use any types of visualization as part of their practice or research. In parallel, a variety of visualization tools have come out that target a large variety of audiences outside of the sciences and traditional data analysis domains (e.g., children, “everyday people”, and researchers in the humanities).

This raises questions around the roles that visualization tools play as part of the visualization creation process. What is important to consider when building visualization tools for non-expert audiences? How do certain approaches enforced by visualization tools influence people’s (thinking) processes? And what is the role of visualization in these new usage contexts?

In this talk, I will examine visualization as a (creative, sometimes speculative) thinking process, rather than a means to an end. I will illustrate the benefits and drawbacks of different visualization tool paradigms on the visualization creation process and outline how an emphasis on “process” may open up new ways of discussing the role of visualization across disciplines and contexts.

Bio:

Uta Hinrichs a Lecturer at the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, specializing in Information Visualization and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). She received her PhD in Computer Science with specialization in Computational Media Design from the University of Calgary, Canada. Heavily drawing form fields outside of Computer Science (e.g., Design, Literary Studies, and Information Sciences), Uta’s research is driven by the question of how to facilitate insightful, pleasurable and critical interactions with information in physical and digital spaces, both as part of professional activities and everyday life. She explores this question through the design of visualizations and visual interfaces and through the study of their use in-situ. As a visualization researcher Uta has been involved in number of collaborations with artists, historians, and literary scholars which have fueled her interest in the role of visualization as part of humanities research and practice. Her research has been presented and published at academic venues spanning the fields of Visualization, HCI, Literary Studies, and Digital Humanities, as well as, museums, libraries, and art galleries.