Glyphboard: Visual Exploration of High-Dimensional Data Combining Glyphs with Dimensionality Reduction

• Published in: IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics Vol. 26; no. 4; pp. 1661 - 1671
• Main Authors: Kammer, Dietrich, Keck, Mandy, Grunder, Thomas, Maasch, Alexander, Thom, Thomas, Kleinsteuber, Martin, Groh, Rainer
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.04.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Core making; Data analytics; Domains; Empirical studies in interaction design; Estimating techniques; Human-centered computing; Reduction; Scientists; Subject specialists; Visualization; Visualization systems and tools
• ISSN: 1077-2626; 1941-0506; 1941-0506
• DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2020.2969060

Rigorous data science is interdisciplinary at its core. In order to make sense of high-dimensional data, data scientists need to enter into a dialogue with domain experts. We present Glyphboard, a visualization tool that aims to support this dialogue. Glyphboard is a zoomable user interface that combines well-known methods such as dimensionality reduction and glyph-based visualizations in a novel, seamless, and integrated tool. While the dimensionality reduction affords a quick overview over the data, glyph-based visualizations are able to show the most relevant dimensions in the data set at one glance. We contribute an open-source prototype of Glyphboard, a general exchange format for high-dimensional data, and a case study with nine data scientists and domain experts from four exemplary domains in order to evaluate how the different visualization and interaction features of Glyphboard are used.