Frank Elavsky, who is on the academic job market, will be at VIS so come and say hi. He is also co-organizing the second workshop on accessible visualization.

Congratulations to Dominik for receiving a 10 year Test of Time award for Voyager!

Additionally, the following VIS 2025 papers feature DIG lab members:

Below are the CHI 2025 papers featuring DIG lab members:

Congratulations to Dominik Moritz for receiving the 2024 Visualization Significant New Researcher Award!

Additionally, the following VIS 2024 papers feature DIG lab members:

Dominik is one of the accessibility chairs at VIS making sure that the conference is accessible to everyone.

Dominik will be on three panels: a panel at Vis in Practice on visualization for augmenting intelligence, a panel on How should VIS4ML redefine itself in the rapid evolution of AI, and a panel on establishing and thriving in an academic career.

Additionally, the following VIS 2023 papers feature DIG lab members:

The following CSCW 2023 papers feature DIG lab members:

While our lab is specifically interested in accessible data representation authoring and accessible analytical work, we want to focus this workshop on the connections we hope to form with our community related to graphics (as a broader topic) and braille and tactile media and set the groundwork for better understanding the materials and tools we have available to us.

Our workshop has 2 high level goals:

1. Bring the local community of researchers and interested BVI and deafblind experts together.
2. Explore:
   • challenges around braille and tactile graphics for BVI and deafblind individuals,
   • limitations of our current materials and tools,
   • considerations for research and collaboration.

This workshop is invite-only, but you’re more than welcome to email Frank Elavsky if you think there is someone who should be present who has additional expertise to offer. If you’re wondering whether you’re invited or not, you should have already received an email.

We are not intending to use this workshop as a “hackathon” or time to come up with solutions, since that may be outside of the scope of our time and interests. However we do expect that many of our participants will choose to pursue potential future projects together and want to encourage attendees to follow up with each other.

The specifics of the agenda and details are subject to change, but roughly will look like the following:

Summary information for attendees:

• When: Thursday, November 17th from 11am - 3pm Eastern Time, with breaks at 12 and 2.
• Where: DIG Lab, A408 NSH (that’s on Floor A).
• Who is welcome: Members of the local community who identify as blind or visually impaired, are researchers here at CMU, or are practitioners in braille or tactile media design and production.

The agenda (details pending and subject to updates):

• Introduction and demo, 11am - 12pm: The first hour will be for folks to introduce themselves to the group and share why they are attending. Then we will have an introductory talk and discussion led by Chancey Fleet and a demo of our Dot Pad, a refreshable tactile display.
• Lunch, 12pm - 1pm: We will be providing lunch. Please provide us with your dietary needs and information about any accommodations you require. We’ll do our best to make sure you’re well taken care of.
• Second topic, 1pm - 2pm: “What are the limits and potential in our current tools and materials?” Activities for defining the scope of problems BVI and deafblind individuals face with braille and tactile materials and limitations of our current materials and tools.
• Break, 2pm - 2:15pm: A short break.
• Final topic, 2:15pm - 3pm: “What are the considerations and needs for forming collaborations in this space?” Activities for defining the scope of challenges in terms of research and collaboration efforts with braille and tactile tools and materials.

Note, if you are an attendee and haven’t already responded to us by using the link above: Please provide us with your dietary needs and information about any accommodations you require. We’ll do our best to make sure you’re well taken care of.

Don’t hesitate to email Frank Elavsky with any questions, comments, or concerns about this workshop.

Adam is co-organizing the 5th Workshop on Visualization for AI Explainability on Monday, October 17.

Adam will also be a panelist at the Visualization in Biomedical AI workshop, also on Monday, October 17.

Dominik will be a panelist at Vis in Practice.

In addition, the following VIS 2022 papers feature DIG lab members:

Below are the CHI 2022 papers featuring DIG lab members:

If you are interested in participating, please fill out this form, or email the researchers with any questions.

Background: Many machine learning models work by generating a “latent space” which maps out (or “embeds”) the input data to better perform a downstream task, such as classification. Visualizing these embedding spaces is an important step to make sure that the model has learned the desired attributes (e.g. correctly separating dogs from cats, or cancer cells from non-cancer cells). However, most existing visualizations are static and are quite difficult to compare from one model to another. We have designed a system, called Emblaze, that allows experts to visualize these embedding spaces within a Jupyter notebook, and visually compare and inspect across multiple spaces. Emblaze is publicly available on GitHub. If you are interested in using this tool in your research, we encourage you to participate in our study, or contact us to discuss how it can better support your needs!