Visualization by Demonstration: An Interaction Paradigm for Visual Data Exploration

Although data visualization tools continue to improve, during the data exploration process many of them require users to manually specify visualization techniques, mappings, and parameters. In response, we present the Visualization by Demonstration paradigm, a novel interaction method for visual data exploration. A system which adopts this paradigm allows users to provide visual demonstrations of incremental changes to the visual representation. The system then recommends potential transformations (Visual Representation, Data Mapping, Axes, and View Specification transformations) from the given demonstrations. The user and the system continue to collaborate, incrementally producing more demonstrations and refining the transformations, until the most effective possible visualization is created. As a proof of concept, we present VisExemplar, a mixed-initiative prototype that allows users to explore their data by recommending appropriate transformations in response to the given demonstrations.