ComputableViz: Mathematical Operators as a Formalism for Visualization Processing and Analysis

TL;DR

ComputableViz introduces a formal mathematical framework and a library for processing, analyzing, and manipulating multiple visualizations collectively, addressing limitations of existing single-visualization-focused approaches.

Contribution

The paper proposes a formalism using mathematical operators for visualization tasks and implements it in the ComputableViz library to support multi-visualization analysis.

Findings

Supports operations on multiple visualization specifications

Enables visualization embedding generation

Automates making visualizations accessible

Abstract

Data visualizations are created and shared on the web at an unprecedented speed, raising new needs and questions for processing and analyzing visualizations after they have been generated and digitized. However, existing formalisms focus on operating on a single visualization instead of multiple visualizations, making it challenging to perform analysis tasks such as sorting and clustering visualizations. Through a systematic analysis of previous work, we abstract visualization-related tasks into mathematical operators such as union and propose a design space of visualization operations. We realize the design by developing ComputableViz, a library that supports operations on multiple visualization specifications. To demonstrate its usefulness and extensibility, we present multiple usage scenarios concerning processing and analyzing visualization, such as generating visualization embeddings and automatically making visualizations accessible. We conclude by discussing research opportunities and challenges for managing and exploiting the massive visualizations on the web.