Dr. Lena Cibulski, new member of the chair Visual Analytics (Institute for Visual & Analytic Computing, University of Rostock), will give a presentation on the topic
"Making Decisions with Visualizations"
as part of the VAC Colloquium.
Dr. Lena Cibulski recently joined the Chair of Visual Analytics as a postdoctoral researcher. Her research activities focus on bridging information visualization and multi-attribute decision-making, with an emphasis on design studies in different application areas. She received her doctoral degree in Computer Science from the Technical University of Darmstadt in 2024. Reflecting on her PhD research, this talk provides different perspectives on using data visualization to assist and inform decisions.
Afterwards we look forward to discussions while enjoying coffee and cookies.
The event is open to anyone interested.
Abstract:
For many decisions in our personal and professional lives, computing has made it easy to compile large numbers of options to choose from. With no objectively optimal solution present, identifying the best solution requires our human judgment to trade off conflicting goals. Data visualization is a powerful tool to help us explore and make sense of available courses of action. While many interactive visualizations already live in the context of decision-making, how to design for humans who make decisions with visualized data continues to be a vibrant research area. In this talk, I will share some ideas on how we can describe decision activities, design visualization tools for their support and validate their usefulness under real-world conditions. Through case studies, I will show how our visualizations helped users apply their preferences to balance the levels of performance that are achievable under different conditions. Finally, I will share my thoughts on future research directions that emerge in this area.