IVDA Research Streams

Research at IVDA includes various methodologies and branches, all related to the meaningful combination of both strengths of humans and machines in the data analysis, knowledge generation, and decision-making process.
One of IVDA's assets is its support for data-centric, model-centric, and human-centric approaches, as well as their combinations, i.e., analysis processes that enable all three entities to benefit from (gray directions in the diagram).
In addition, our EEE Framework describes Human knowledge and preference Externalization, Model and output Explanation, and Data Exploration, as well as their combinations (orange, blue, and green directions in the diagram). This perspective on data analysis is about how entities can contribute to analytics processes, enabling modern forms of human-model-data interaction and collaboration.
IVDA research particularly studies data analytics challenges with complexities requiring many of these directions in unified interactive visual data analysis approaches and systems. Most sophisticated IVDA systems support all six directions between Humans, Models, and Data.
Links to Data-centric research: IVDA for Event Sequences | IVDA for Time Series
Links to Model-centric research: Interactive Machine Learning at IVDA
Links to Human-centric research: Data Humanism at IVDA
General research streams are as follows.
Exploratory Data Analysis
Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) in Visual Analytics enables the intuitive discovery of new knowledge through interactive engagement with high-dimensional data. By leveraging dynamic visualizations, EDA facilitates pattern recognition, hypothesis generation, and insight extraction. Interactive tools empower users to explore complex datasets, guiding analysis through human intuition, machine learning, and visual feedback loops.
Links to application domains: Digital Libraries
Explainable Artificial Intelligence
Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) in Visual Analytics integrates interpretable and trustworthy AI by combining human-centric visual exploration with algorithmic transparency. It enhances user understanding, enabling interaction with models via interpretable representations. Trustworthy AI fosters reliability, fairness, and accountability, ensuring that decision-making aligns with human intuition, fostering trust and informed insights.
Knowledge and Preference Externalization
Knowledge and Preference Externalization refers to the process of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit forms through interactive visual interfaces. Rooted in social sciences and pioneered in visualization research, it enables users to express preferences via annotations, scores, and rankings. This facilitates human-system interaction, linking feedback to ranking algorithms for decision support.
Links: Interactive Data Labeling at IVDA | Interactive Item Ranking at IVDA
Interactive Data Labeling
Labeling data instances is a fundamental prerequisite for supervised machine learning. Our research studies the user-in-the-loop data labeling process from the machine learning perspective (leveraging active learning) and the interactive and visual perspective (enabling humans to select instances by themselves). We base our work on our “visual interactive labeling” (VIAL) methodology, which unifies both perspectives.
Interactive Item Ranking
The human-centered ranking of multidimensional items is a non-trivial task. Comparing complex items to each other to create a ranking can be time-consuming and, especially if data sets are large, there is no guarantee that the result is satisfying. We characterize, design, and evaluate interactive solutions for the creation of item rankings and design and develop ranking explainers, to enable users to gain more trust into given ranking models.
Interactive Relation Discovery
Interactive Relation Discovery enables the identification of dependencies, relations, and causalities between data attributes through interactive exploration. It supports research and practice by uncovering hidden patterns, enhancing data-driven decision-making. By fostering awareness of data interconnections, it improves model interpretability, supports hypothesis generation, and strengthens analytical reasoning across domains.
Links to application domains: Digital Libraries
Human-Model Collaboration
Human-Model Collaboration emphasizes understanding humans, models, and data as a foundation for designing effective communication and interaction. It fosters data-driven decision-making through intuitive dialogues between users and AI systems, leveraging the strengths of both. By aligning human insight with model capabilities, it enables more robust, transparent, and collaborative analytical processes.
Ethical Approaches to AI
Ethical Approaches to AI integrate ethical and humanistic principles into data-driven decision-making and machine learning applications. They aim to reflect human values, promote fairness, and reduce bias by ensuring transparency, accountability, and inclusivity. These approaches guide responsible AI development, aligning technological progress with societal well-being and individual rights.
Publications of the IVDA Group
ZORA Publication List
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Publications
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2025
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IVESA - Visual Analysis of Time-Stamped Event Sequences. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 31(4):2235-2256.
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2024
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MS Pattern Explorer: interactive visual exploration of temporal activity patterns for multiple sclerosis. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), 31(11):2496-2506.
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Reflections on interactive visualization of electronic health records: past, present, future. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), 31(11):2423-2428.
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DaedalusData: Exploration, Knowledge Externalization and Labeling of Particles in Medical Manufacturing — A Design Study. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 31(1):54-64.
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ScrollyPOI: A Narrative-Driven Interactive Recommender System for Points-of-Interest Exploration and Explainability. In: ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP), Cagliari, Italy, 1 July 2024 - 4 July 2024. ACM Digital library, 292-304.
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From wearable sensor data to digital biomarker development: ten lessons learned and a framework proposal. npj Digital Medicine, 7(1):161.
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Tag-Xplore: Interactive Exploration of Annotation Practices in Digital Editions. In: EuroVis Workshop on Visual Analytics (EuroVA), Odense, Denmark, 27 May 2024. The Eurographics Association, online.
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"It's like a glimpse into the future": Exploring the Role of Blood Glucose Prediction Technologies for Type 1 Diabetes Self-Management. In: CHI '24: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Honolulu HI USA, 11 May 2024 - 16 May 2024. ACM Digital library, online.
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Visualization and Automation in Data Science: Exploring the Paradox of Humans-in-the-Loop. In: IEEE VIS: Visualization in Data Science Symposium (VDS), Tampa, USA, 13 Oktober 2024 - 18 Oktober 2024. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1-5.
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Towards Personal Explanations for Recommender Systems: A Study on the Impact of Familiarity and Urgency. In: NordiCHI Adjunct 2024: Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Uppsala, Sweden, 13 Oktober 2024 - 16 Oktober 2024. Association for Computing Machinery, 1-8.
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2023
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LFPeers: Temporal similarity search and result exploration. Computers & Graphics, 115:81-95.
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How applicable are attribute-based approaches for human-centered ranking creation?. Computers & Graphics, 114:45-58.
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ManuKnowVis: How to Support Different User Groups in Contextualizing and Leveraging Knowledge Repositories. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 29(8):3441-3457.
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Human-Based and Automatic Feature Ideation for Time Series Data: A Comparative Study. In: EuroVis Workshop on Visual Analytics (EuroVA), Leipzig, 12 June 2023, 7-12.
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Interaction Tasks for Explainable Recommender Systems. In: EuroVis 2023 - Posters, Leipzig, 12 Juni 2023 - 16 Juni 2023. The Eurographics Association, 37-39.
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ORD-Xplore: Bridging Open Research Data Collections through Modality Abstractions. In: EuroVis 2023 - Posters, Leipzig, 12 Juni 2021 - 16 Juni 2021. The Eurographics Association, 49-51.
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RiskFix: Supporting Expert Validation of Predictive Timeseries Models in High-Intensity Settings. In: EuroVis 2023 - Short Papers, Leipzig, 14 Juni 2023. The Eurographics Association, 13-17.
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The Future of Interactive Data Analysis and Visualization. In: EuroVis 2023 - Panel, Leipzig, Germany, 12 Juni 2023 - 16 Juni 2023. Eurographics Association, online.
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Why am I reading this? Explaining Personalized News Recommender Systems. In: EuroVis Workshop on Visual Analytics (EuroVA), Leipzig, 12 June 2023. The Eurographics Association, 67-72.
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