Instructional Comics for Self-Paced Learning of Data Visualization Tools and Concepts M. Boucher, M. AlKadi, B. Bach, W. Aigner Computer Graphics Forum, 2025 In this paper, we introduce instructional comics to explain concepts and routines in data visualization tools. As tools for visual data exploration proliferate, there is a growing need for tailored training and onboarding demonstrating interfaces, concepts, and interactions. Building on recent research in visualization education, we detail our iterative process of designing instructional comics for four different types of instructional content. Through a mixed‐method eye‐tracking study involving 20 participants, we analyze how people engage with these comics when using a new visualization tool, and validate our design choices. We interpret observed behaviors as unique affordances of instructional comics, supporting their use during tasks and complementing traditional instructional methods like video tutorials and workshops, and formulate six guidelines to inform the design of future instructional comics for visualization.
Challenges and Opportunities in Data Visualization Education: A Call to Action Benjamin Bach, Mandy Keck, Fateme Rajabiyazdi, Tatiana Losev, Isabel Meirelles, Jason Dykes, Robert S. Laramee, Mashael AlKadi, Christina Stoiber, Samuel Huron, Charles Perin, Luiz Morais, Wolfgang Aigner, Doris Kosminsky, Magdalena Boucher, Søren Knudsen, Areti Manataki, Jan Aerts, Uta Hinrichs, Jonathan C. Roberts, Sheelagh Carpendale IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2024 This paper is a call to action for research and discussion on data visualization education. As visualization evolves and spreads through our professional and personal lives, we need to understand how to support and empower a broad and diverse community of learners in visualization. Data Visualization is a diverse and dynamic discipline that combines knowledge from different fields, is tailored to suit diverse audiences and contexts, and frequently incorporates tacit knowledge. This complex nature leads to a series of interrelated challenges for data visualization education. Driven by a lack of consolidated knowledge, overview, and orientation for visualization education, the 21 authors of this paper—educators and researchers in data visualization—identify and describe 19 challenges informed by our collective practical experience. We organize these challenges around seven themes People, Goals & Assessment, Environment, Motivation, Methods, Materials, and Change. Across these themes, we formulate 43 research questions to address these challenges. As part of our call to action, we then conclude with 5 cross-cutting opportunities and respective action items: embrace DIVERSITY+INCLUSION, build COMMUNITIES, conduct RESEARCH, act AGILE, and relish RESPONSIBILITY. We aim to inspire researchers, educators and learners to drive visualization education forward and discuss why, how, who and where we educate, as we learn to use visualization to address challenges across many scales and many domains in a rapidly changing world: viseducationchallenges.github.io.
Show Me My Users: A Dashboard Visualizing User Interaction Logs Jinrui Wang, Mashael AlKadi, Benjamin Bach Proceedings 2023 IEEE Visualization Conference Short Papers Vis 2023, 2023 This paper describes the design of a dashboard and analysis pipeline to monitor users of visualization tools in the wild. Our pipeline describes how to extract analysis KPIs from extensive log event data and a mix of user types. The resulting three-page dashboard displays live KPIs, helping analysts to understand users, detect exploratory behaviors, plan education interventions, and improve tool features. We propose this case study as a motivation to use the dashboard approach for a more ‘casual’ monitoring of users and building carer mindsets for visualization tools.
Understanding Barriers to Network Exploration with Visualization: A Report from the Trenches Mashael AlKadi, Vanessa Serrano, James Scott-Brown, Catherine Plaisant, Jean-Daniel Fekete, Uta Hinrichs, Benjamin Bach IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2023 This article reports on an in-depth study that investigates barriers to network exploration with visualizations. Network visualization tools are becoming increasingly popular, but little is known about how analysts plan and engage in the visual exploration of network data—which exploration strategies they employ, and how they prepare their data, define questions, and decide on visual mappings. Our study involved a series of workshops, interaction logging, and observations from a 6-week network exploration course. Our findings shed light on the stages that define analysts' approaches to network visualization and barriers experienced by some analysts during their network visualization processes. These barriers mainly appear before using a specific tool and include defining exploration goals, identifying relevant network structures and abstractions, or creating appropriate visual mappings for their network data. Our findings inform future work in visualization education and analyst-centered network visualization tool design.
RECENT SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS
Instructional Comics for Self‐Paced Learning of Data Visualization Tools and Concepts M Boucher, M Alkadi, B Bach, W Aigner Computer Graphics Forum 44 (3), e70130 , 2025 2025 Citations: 3
Challenges and opportunities in data visualization education: A call to action B Bach, M Keck, F Rajabiyazdi, T Losev, I Meirelles, J Dykes, ... IEEE Transactions on visualization and computer graphics 30 (1), 649-660 , 2023 2023 Citations: 115
Show Me My Users: A Dashboard Visualizing User Interaction Logs J Wang, M AlKadi, B Bach 2023 IEEE Visualization and Visual Analytics (VIS), 156-160 , 2023 2023 Citations: 4
Understanding barriers to network exploration with visualization: A report from the trenches M AlKadi, V Serrano, J Scott-Brown, C Plaisant, JD Fekete, U Hinrichs, ... IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 29 (1), 907-917 , 2022 2022 Citations: 20
MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS
Challenges and opportunities in data visualization education: A call to action B Bach, M Keck, F Rajabiyazdi, T Losev, I Meirelles, J Dykes, ... IEEE Transactions on visualization and computer graphics 30 (1), 649-660 , 2023 2023 Citations: 115
Understanding barriers to network exploration with visualization: A report from the trenches M AlKadi, V Serrano, J Scott-Brown, C Plaisant, JD Fekete, U Hinrichs, ... IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 29 (1), 907-917 , 2022 2022 Citations: 20
Show Me My Users: A Dashboard Visualizing User Interaction Logs J Wang, M AlKadi, B Bach 2023 IEEE Visualization and Visual Analytics (VIS), 156-160 , 2023 2023 Citations: 4
Instructional Comics for Self‐Paced Learning of Data Visualization Tools and Concepts M Boucher, M Alkadi, B Bach, W Aigner Computer Graphics Forum 44 (3), e70130 , 2025 2025 Citations: 3
