Data Formulator: AI-Powered Concept-Driven Visualization Authoring
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 12, 2025

Using Generative Art to Convey Past and Future Climate Transitions
Published on: March 31, 2023
Abstract:
With most modern visualization tools, authors need to transform their data into tidy formats to create visualizations they want. Because this requires experience with programming or separate data processing tools, data transformation remains a barrier in visualization authoring. To address this challenge, we present a new visualization paradigm, concept binding, that separates high-level visualization intents and low-level data transformation steps, leveraging an AI agent. We realize this paradigm in Data Formulator, an interactive visualization authoring tool. With Data Formulator, authors first define data concepts they plan to visualize using natural languages or examples, and then bind them to visual channels. Data Formulator then dispatches its AI-agent to automatically transform the input data to surface these concepts and generate desired visualizations. When presenting the results (transformed table and output visualizations) from the AI agent, Data Formulator provides feedback to help authors inspect and understand them. A user study with 10 participants shows that participants could learn and use Data Formulator to create visualizations that involve challenging data transformations, and presents interesting future research directions.
More Related Videos
08:35Interactive and Visualized Online Experimentation System for Engineering Education and Research
Published on: November 24, 2021
10:44Inherent Dynamics Visualizer, an Interactive Application for Evaluating and Visualizing Outputs from a Gene Regulatory Network Inference Pipeline
Published on: December 7, 2021
Related Concept Videos
pV-Diagrams
Visual System
Once through the pupil, the light passes through the lens, a...
Creative Thinking
Divergent thinking is the...
Velocity and Position by Graphical Method
Design Example: Designing Water Slide
Bernoulli's principle determines the water's velocity along the...
Vision