Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

My interest in data visualization continues to expand, not only because I find the challenge of making data more comprehensible fascinating, but also because of the growing importance of data in all walks of our lives. This pervasive data and the overt challenge of trying to make data understandable is creating new issues in diversity and inclusivity. It is becoming apparent that data comprehension needs are not uniform. In creating visualizations, we must be careful to not only cater to a new elite - those who already are data experts. We must take our ideas of data democratization broadly, looking to empower people, to be inclusive, and to support diversity. Data related technology is now considered essential for many activities including working, playing, communicating, learning, and socializing. Although people clearly benefit from digital data technologies, using them is frequently stressful and complex. My long-term objective is to design, develop, and evaluate interactive data visualizations so that they improve data accessibility and comprehension to better support the increasing diversity of people whose work and social activities are impacted by data. As data generation, usage, and importance continues to explode - the importance of working towards developing technologies that will make this data more comprehensible, accessible, and ideally more actionable is becoming more and more evident. More immediately I will start by: 1)Understanding fundamentals: I will start by using formative evaluation methods to learn more about how a greater variety of people think about, use, and take actions on and with data; 2)Inventing new interactive visualizations: By making use of the expanding understanding of human predilections in different walks of life as developed in (1), I will invent new interactive visualizations that provide more inclusive access to data. 3)Creating visualizations for new situations: I will combine the understandings gained in (1) with the interactive visualizations invented in (2) to work with the players in the open data movement to begin to address the changing demands around accessibility, transparency, diversity and inclusivity of data technologies. We (my talented students and I) will apply our considerable empirical skills to better understand human data interaction fundamentals; we leverage our new understandings to invent new interactive data visualizations that support people in their daily activities.