Christopher Collins

Taejun Kim, Amy Karlson, Aakar Gupta et al.

While text entry is an essential and frequent task in Augmented Reality (AR) applications, devising an efficient and easy-to-use text entry method for AR remains an open challenge. This research presents STAR, a smartphone-analogous AR text entry technique that leverages a user's familiarity with smartphone two-thumb typing. With STAR, a user performs thumb typing on a virtual QWERTY keyboard that is overlain on the skin of their hands. During an evaluation study of STAR, participants achieved a mean typing speed of 21.9 WPM (i.e., 56% of their smartphone typing speed), and a mean error rate of 0.3% after 30 minutes of practice. We further analyze the major factors implicated in the performance gap between STAR and smartphone typing, and discuss ways this gap could be narrowed.

Syed Mekael Wasti, Shou-Yi Hung, Christopher Collins et al.

Machine translation (MT) post-editing and research data collection often rely on inefficient, disconnected workflows. We introduce TranslationCorrect, an integrated framework designed to streamline these tasks. TranslationCorrect combines MT generation using models like NLLB, automated error prediction using models like XCOMET or LLM APIs (providing detailed reasoning), and an intuitive post-editing interface within a single environment. Built with human-computer interaction (HCI) principles in mind to minimize cognitive load, as confirmed by a user study. For translators, it enables them to correct errors and batch translate efficiently. For researchers, TranslationCorrect exports high-quality span-based annotations in the Error Span Annotation (ESA) format, using an error taxonomy inspired by Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM). These outputs are compatible with state-of-the-art error detection models and suitable for training MT or post-editing systems. Our user study confirms that TranslationCorrect significantly improves translation efficiency and user satisfaction over traditional annotation methods.

Mahmood Jasim, Christopher Collins, Ali Sarvghad et al.

In this study, we investigate how supporting serendipitous discovery and analysis of online product reviews can encourage readers to explore reviews more comprehensively prior to making purchase decisions. We propose two interventions -- Exploration Metrics that can help readers understand and track their exploration patterns through visual indicators and a Bias Mitigation Model that intends to maximize knowledge discovery by suggesting sentiment and semantically diverse reviews. We designed, developed, and evaluated a text analytics system called Serendyze, where we integrated these interventions. We asked 100 crowd workers to use Serendyze to make purchase decisions based on product reviews. Our evaluation suggests that exploration metrics enabled readers to efficiently cover more reviews in a balanced way, and suggestions from the bias mitigation model influenced readers to make confident data-driven decisions. We discuss the role of user agency and trust in text-level analysis systems and their applicability in domains beyond review exploration.

Kyle Wm. Hall, Anthony Kouroupis, Anastasia Bezerianos et al.

Problem-driven visualization work is rooted in deeply understanding the data, actors, processes, and workflows of a target domain. However, an individual's personality traits and cognitive abilities may also influence visualization use. Diverse user needs and abilities raise natural questions for specificity in visualization design: Could individuals from different domains exhibit performance differences when using visualizations? Are any systematic variations related to their cognitive abilities? This study bridges domain-specific perspectives on visualization design with those provided by cognition and perception. We measure variations in visualization task performance across chemistry, computer science, and education, and relate these differences to variations in spatial ability. We conducted an online study with over 60 domain experts consisting of tasks related to pie charts, isocontour plots, and 3D scatterplots, and grounded by a well-documented spatial ability test. Task performance (correctness) varied with profession across more complex visualizations, but not pie charts, a comparatively common visualization. We found that correctness correlates with spatial ability, and the professions differ in terms of spatial ability. These results indicate that domains differ not only in the specifics of their data and tasks, but also in terms of how effectively their constituent members engage with visualizations and their cognitive traits. Analyzing participants' confidence and strategy comments suggests that focusing on performance neglects important nuances, such as differing approaches to engage with even common visualizations and potential skill transference. Our findings offer a fresh perspective on discipline-specific visualization with recommendations to help guide visualization design that celebrates the uniqueness of the disciplines and individuals we seek to serve.

Wesley Burr, Fanny Chevalier, Christopher Collins et al.

The unprecedented growth in the availability of data of all types and qualities and the emergence of the field of data science has provided an impetus to finally realizing the implementation of the full breadth of the Nolan and Temple Lang proposed integration of computing concepts into statistics curricula at all levels in statistics and new data science programs and courses. Moreover, data science, implemented carefully, opens accessible pathways to stem for students for whom neither mathematics nor computer science are natural affinities, and who would traditionally be excluded. We discuss a proposal for the stealth development of computational skills in students' first exposure to data science through careful, scaffolded exposure to computation and its power. The intent of this approach is to support students, regardless of interest and self-efficacy in coding, in becoming data-driven learners, who are capable of asking complex questions about the world around them, and then answering those questions through the use of data-driven inquiry. This discussion is presented in the context of the International Data Science in Schools Project which recently published computer science and statistics consensus curriculum frameworks for a two-year secondary school data science program, designed to make data science accessible to all.

Brandon Laughlin, Christopher Collins, Karthik Sankaranarayanan et al.

This paper presents a framework which enables a user to more easily make corrections to adversarial texts. While attack algorithms have been demonstrated to automatically build adversaries, changes made by the algorithms can often have poor semantics or syntax. Our framework is designed to facilitate human intervention by aiding users in making corrections. The framework extends existing attack algorithms to work within an evolutionary attack process paired with a visual analytics loop. Using an interactive dashboard a user is able to review the generation process in real time and receive suggestions from the system for edits to be made. The adversaries can be used to both diagnose robustness issues within a single classifier or to compare various classifier options. With the weaknesses identified, the framework can also be used as a first step in mitigating adversarial threats. The framework can be used as part of further research into defense methods in which the adversarial examples are used to evaluate new countermeasures. We demonstrate the framework with a word swapping attack for the task of sentiment classification.

Kyle Wm. Hall, Adam J. Bradley, Uta Hinrichs et al.

While previous work exists on how to conduct and disseminate insights from problem-driven visualization projects and design studies, the literature does not address how to accomplish these goals in transdisciplinary teams in ways that advance all disciplines involved. In this paper we introduce and define a new methodological paradigm we call design by immersion, which provides an alternative perspective on problem-driven visualization work. Design by immersion embeds transdisciplinary experiences at the center of the visualization process by having visualization researchers participate in the work of the target domain (or domain experts participate in visualization research). Based on our own combined experiences of working on cross-disciplinary, problem-driven visualization projects, we present six case studies that expose the opportunities that design by immersion enables, including (1) exploring new domain-inspired visualization design spaces, (2) enriching domain understanding through personal experiences, and (3) building strong transdisciplinary relationships. Furthermore, we illustrate how the process of design by immersion opens up a diverse set of design activities that can be combined in different ways depending on the type of collaboration, project, and goals. Finally, we discuss the challenges and potential pitfalls of design by immersion.

Mennatallah El-Assady, Rebecca Kehlbeck, Christopher Collins et al.

We present a framework that allows users to incorporate the semantics of their domain knowledge for topic model refinement while remaining model-agnostic. Our approach enables users to (1) understand the semantic space of the model, (2) identify regions of potential conflicts and problems, and (3) readjust the semantic relation of concepts based on their understanding, directly influencing the topic modeling. These tasks are supported by an interactive visual analytics workspace that uses word-embedding projections to define concept regions which can then be refined. The user-refined concepts are independent of a particular document collection and can be transferred to related corpora. All user interactions within the concept space directly affect the semantic relations of the underlying vector space model, which, in turn, change the topic modeling. In addition to direct manipulation, our system guides the users' decision-making process through recommended interactions that point out potential improvements. This targeted refinement aims at minimizing the feedback required for an efficient human-in-the-loop process. We confirm the improvements achieved through our approach in two user studies that show topic model quality improvements through our visual knowledge externalization and learning process.

Rafael Veras, Christopher Collins

The scalability of a particular visualization approach is limited by the ability for people to discern differences between plots made with different datasets. Ideally, when the data changes, the visualization changes in perceptible ways. This relation breaks down when there is a mismatch between the encoding and the character of the dataset being viewed. Unfortunately, visualizations are often designed and evaluated without fully exploring how they will respond to a wide variety of datasets. We explore the use of an image similarity measure, the Multi-Scale Structural Similarity Index (MS-SSIM), for testing the discriminability of a data visualization across a variety of datasets. MS-SSIM is able to capture the similarity of two visualizations across multiple scales, including low level granular changes and high level patterns. Significant data changes that are not captured by the MS-SSIM indicate visualizations of low discriminability and effectiveness. The measure's utility is demonstrated with two empirical studies. In the first, we compare human similarity judgments and MS-SSIM scores for a collection of scatterplots. In the second, we compute the discriminability values for a set of basic visualizations and compare them with empirical measurements of effectiveness. In both cases, the analyses show that the computational measure is able to approximate empirical results. Our approach can be used to rank competing encodings on their discriminability and to aid in selecting visualizations for a particular type of data distribution.