iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

Observable @observablehq.com · 27/02/2026

When D3 was released in February 2011, it transformed how we build data visualizations for the web and ushered in a new age of unbridled creativity in information design, data journalism, and beyond. Today, it remains the backbone of modern, interactive data viz. Happy 15th birthday, D3 🎂 d3js.org

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Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

Hyeok Kim @hyeok.me · 19/02/2026

[Study participant recruitment] Share your experiences with visualization experiment design Hi, we (me and @jheer.org, University of Washington) are looking for interview participants to share experiences and challenges in designing visualization experiments. Form: forms.gle/RtfJ7M5ELtuR...

forms.gle

Share your experiences with visualization experiment design

Hi, we (Hyeok and Jeff, University of Washington) are looking for participants for an interview study to understand experiences and challenges in designing visualization experiments for the future too...

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Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

Josh Horowitz @joshuahhh.com · 17/02/2026

Do you make drag-and-drop interfaces? Or do you wish you did, but they're just too hard? We're working on a new way to drag & drop! Wanna try it out? Join our study – we'll ask you about your drag-and-drop experiences, and get your hands on the prototype. Join here: forms.gle/J82tFtu6DqS8.... 🙏!

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Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

Nadieh Bremer @nadiehbremer.com · 12/02/2026

📣 NEW! I’ve just released the BIGGEST and perhaps most creative project I’ve ever worked on! “Searching for Birds” searchingforbirds.visualcinnamon.com 🐤 A project, an article, an exploration that dives into the data that connects humans with birds, by looking at how we search for birds.

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Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

Kyle Thayer @kylethayer.com · 24/11/2025

I'm excited to have updated our color naming in different languages project to use the new Oklab/Oklch color space. The new views highlight the differences in how English and Korean divide blues, greens and purples. idl.uw.edu/color-naming... @jheer.org @uwcse.bsky.social @ischool.uw.edu

A hue band (in Oklch, equal in c) of colors shown divided into colors in English and Korean. Where English has one "green," Korean splits into "연두색" and "초록색." Where English has one "blue," Korean splits into "하늘색" and "파랑색." Where English has one "purple," Korean splits into "보라색" and "연보라색" and "자주색."

Many hue bands (in Oklch, each is equal in c) of colors shown divided into colors in English and Korean. Where English has one "green," Korean splits into "연두색" and "초록색." Where English has one "blue," Korean splits into "하늘색" and "파랑색." Where English has one "purple," Korean splits into "보라색" and "연보라색" and "자주색."

Many rings of color bins (in Oklab, equal in l) shown divided into colors in English and Korean. Where English has one "green," Korean splits into "연두색" and "초록색." Where English has one "blue," Korean splits into "하늘색" and "파랑색." Where English has one "purple," Korean splits into "보라색" and "연보라색" and "자주색."

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 09/11/2025

Carr et al had a similar idea - applied to color encoding - back in the 80s! (From www.jstor.org/stable/2289444, paywalled…)

A 2D binned hexgrid plot with a color encoding that uses hue for the logarithmic order of magnitude and area of a black infill to linearly encode the less significant digits.

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Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

jonathan zong @jonathanzong.com · 04/09/2025

Interested in accessibility, visualization, or data ethics? I'm looking for Ph.D. students to join @data-and-design.org at CU Boulder Info Sci in Fall 2026. data-and-design.org/recruiting/phd

data-and-design.org

Recruiting Ph.D. Students for Fall 2026

We are an interdisciplinary research group at the University of Colorado Boulder that uses design to understand and reimagine socio-technical systems.

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Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

CMU Human-Computer Interaction Institute @hcii.cmu.edu · 23/07/2025

The data vis project "Mosaic: An Architecture for Linking Databases and Scalable Interactive Visualizations" received a SIGMOD Best Demo Runner Up award at the ACM SIGMOD/PODS International Conference on Management of Data in Berlin, Germany. Congrats to the Mosaic team on this recognition! 📊🎉

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 29/04/2025

The Mosaic architecture for database-backed interactive visualization just hit 1,000 stars on GitHub! Thank you to all who have participated and contributed!

Screenshot from GitHub showing 1k stars for the Mosaic project, an extensible framework for linking database and interactive views.

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 27/02/2025

TFW you have a grand idea only to find it's out of reach. So it goes for my chatbot that meows and purrs.

A webpage that reads "This domain is for sale! CatGPT.com. $220,000 USD."

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 23/01/2025

And congrats to you, too!

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Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

el @elliot.website · 16/12/2024

@joshuahhh.com and I invite you to explore our experimental visual programming environment (which takes place in a dungeon) Features - dissolve the bounds of decision and explore all possibilities at once - use sigillic incantations, delve into recursive caverns vezwork.github.io/drostes-lair-post

vezwork.github.io

An invitation into Droste's Lair

A swords-and-sorcery programming environment for building and counting mathematical structures

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Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Us #ieeevis 2025 OPCs worked hard on this: the new call for papers is now live! ieeevis.org/year/2025/ye... Submit your best work! Brief account of changes for 2025: * Extra week for supplemental material * Student reviewer program * Opt-in publication of reviews for accepted papers

ieeevis.org

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 08/12/2024

Hi, I’m a main author of the Vega/Altair curriculum notebooks. Indeed these focus on tool learning and aren’t intended as a standalone text for a full vis course. We combine it with many other papers, links, and lectures, as in courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse5...

courses.cs.washington.edu

CSE512: Data Visualization

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Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

Kasper Hornbæk @khornbaek.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction is looking for outreach editors, i.e., junior researchers who wants to rethink and implement how the journal engages online with readers and authors. Deadline for applications is Dec 11. Call at www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... or ask me for more info.

linkedin.com

Kasper Hornbæk on LinkedIn: Dear HCI community (please share, forward) We are seeking two Outreach…

Dear HCI community (please share, forward) We are seeking two Outreach Editors for ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI). The Outreach Editor…

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 27/11/2024

FWIW it took UW IT about a month to complete our subdomain request, but once set up you can administer it yourself.

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 27/11/2024

Updating DNS records for a top-level UW managed subdomain was painless, too. (We did it for @idl.uw.edu.) You just need to add an `_atproto` sub-subdomain, then add the TXT record to that.

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 26/11/2024

Nice! I loved that work and always thought it would be good to do more like that 🤗

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Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

Interactive Data Lab @idl.uw.edu · 26/11/2024

People are now using LLMs to create charts and graphs. How might we assess the quality and consistency of the results? DracoGPT is a method that fits a visualization knowledge base (Draco) to LLM responses, enabling comparison across models, prompts, and results from human subjects experiments.

Overview of the DracoGPT-Rank pipeline. (1) User provides prompt templates for an LLM to rank chart pairs; (2) Draco featurizes charts and produces feature vectors consisting of constraint counts; (3) Draco learns constraint weights over LLM-labeled chart pairs by fitting a RankSVM model; (4) The fitted Draco model can be applied to score charts. Results at each stage of the pipeline afford insight into LLM ranking preferences.

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 26/11/2024

Love this work! Also related is the Boba project, led by Yang Liu and @kalealex.bsky.social, which includes a variety of multiverse visualization and assessment methods. idl.uw.edu/papers/boba

Authoring and visualizing multiverse analyses with Boba. Users start by annotating a script with analytic decisions (a), from which Boba synthesizes a multiplex of possible analysis variants (b). To interpret the results from all analyses, users start with a graph of analytic decisions (c), where sensitive decisions are highlighted in darker blues. Clicking a decision node allows users to compare point estimates (d, blue dots) and uncertainty distributions (d, gray area) between different alternatives. Users may further drill down to assess the fit quality of individual models (e) by comparing observed data (pink) with model predictions (teal).

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 25/11/2024

1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ 🙏 📈

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 25/11/2024

We could precompute the projection and the visualization would load a lot faster, but I wanted to keep all the spatial processing details in the example so folks can see how it’s done. Internally we’re working on a publishing tool that will optimize load times and precompute preaggregations, too!

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 25/11/2024

We have an example site deploying Mosaic in Observable Framework here: github.com/uwdata/mosai... More generally, see links on the project GitHub repo (scroll to the bottom): github.com/uwdata/mosaic

github.com

GitHub - uwdata/mosaic-framework-example: Using Mosaic and DuckDB within Observable Framework

Using Mosaic and DuckDB within Observable Framework - uwdata/mosaic-framework-example

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 25/11/2024

Our research lab is now here on Bluesky! 📊📈

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 25/11/2024

Mosaic serves as an architectural layer that provides (1) access to a backing database and a variety of query optimizations, and (2) a shared selection abstraction that enables integrated filtering across data views (visualizations, tables, input widgets, etc.).

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 25/11/2024

Also, FWIW the Mosaic site is built using VitePress, not Observable Framework. For more explanation of Mosaic, start here: idl.uw.edu/mosaic/what-...

idl.uw.edu

What is Mosaic? | Mosaic

Scalable, interactive data visualization

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 25/11/2024

Mosaic is a framework for linking interactive views and backing databases. Examples include input widgets and vgplot, an interactive grammar of graphics built on Observable Plot, but you can also build and integrate custom components. The Mosaic core handles database querying and linked selections.

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 24/11/2024

Haha been there done that… Neutraface was the official Stanford HCI font while I was on the Farm. The UW move was my opportunity to jump ship to Avenir

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 24/11/2024

Incidentally it’s also been the official UW Interactive Data Lab typeface since 2013. (FWIW I’ve always had a soft spot for Futura but it’s a bit… much. Avenir plays it cooler 😎)

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 21/11/2024

(And in case it’s interesting to you: underneath the hood Mosaic automatically pre-aggregates sufficient statistics, binned at the pixel level, to compute updated regressions on the fly without having to touch the original, large dataset.)

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 21/11/2024

Yes, the local regression is limited to points falling within the brush. Depending on the data and analysis task, there may be utility in seeing localized trends (a simple parametric distribution is a poor model in many cases) but of course statistical inference pitfalls abound. Use with caution 😊

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 21/11/2024

Mosaic optimizes queries to a backing DuckDB instance - either in the browser, on a server, or in a Jupyter notebook kernel - to support fast interactive updates. For more, see idl.uw.edu/mosaic/

idl.uw.edu

Mosaic

Scalable, interactive data visualization

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 21/11/2024

Or, explore all shots taken in the 2023 WNBA season. idl.uw.edu/mosaic/examp...

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 21/11/2024

Fresh off their group's Nobel prize 🧬‼️, this example from UW graduate students enables evaluation of proteins designed using AI diffusion models. idl.uw.edu/mosaic/examp...

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 21/11/2024

Mosaic v0.12 is out: database-powered scalable, interactive visualization! 📈 One new addition is support for dynamic changes in the backing data. Move between smaller and larger samples to balance speed and comprehensive coverage.

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 15/11/2024

Looks great! Nice demo, too 🤗

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Reposted by Jeffrey Heer

trevor manz @manzt.sh · 15/11/2024

still polishing the ergonomics, but really excited to have this working! the little 3mb binary connects to a kernel and launches a native webview to display outputs. ~super~ lightweight and flexible way to script with anywidgets mosaic from the command line with `jupyter console`:

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Jeffrey Heer @jheer.org · 10/11/2024

Not sure where it first originated (Bertin’s levels of organization?) but I believe it was more widely popularized by Mackinlay’s APT around 1986. Ranking here was a way to operationalize visualization recommendation as discrete combinatorial optimization.

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