Glyphboard: Visual Exploration of High-Dimensional Data Combining Glyphs with Dimensionality Reduction

IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2020 Apr;26(4):1661-1671. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2020.2969060. Epub 2020 Jan 23.

Abstract

Rigorous data science is interdisciplinary at its core. In order to make sense of high-dimensional data, data scientists need to enter into a dialogue with domain experts. We present Glyphboard, a visualization tool that aims to support this dialogue. Glyphboard is a zoomable user interface that combines well-known methods such as dimensionality reduction and glyph-based visualizations in a novel, seamless, and integrated tool. While the dimensionality reduction affords a quick overview over the data, glyph-based visualizations are able to show the most relevant dimensions in the data set at one glance. We contribute an open-source prototype of Glyphboard, a general exchange format for high-dimensional data, and a case study with nine data scientists and domain experts from four exemplary domains in order to evaluate how the different visualization and interaction features of Glyphboard are used.