Sorry to say it, but if you're a Ph.D. student, chances are that your code will not live long past your degree. Instead, you should strive for separating your research contribution from their implementation (which counts as validation). Read more: niklaselmqvist.medium.com/your-code-wi...

Only my second UIST paper ever, but please check it out! I can’t go to South Korea (too much travel this fall already), but @clemens.klokmose.net and @maski89.bsky.social will be there to show the flag!

In an act of true courage, @clemens.klokmose.net opens the JavaScript study lecture in our @csaudk.bsky.social HCI class by challenging the students to “ask me anything” about web development, and then proceeds to live code solutions to all contenders. Pictured after white-knuckling drag and drop.

Professor Corrie is on deck for the faculty meeting at @csaudk.bsky.social!

The way we prompt AI has been bothering me for a long time. Accidentally hitting Enter sends off prompts—but surely they should be carefully crafted, not fired off haphazardly? I wrote about why this frustrates me so much and what we should do instead. niklaselmqvist.medium.com/to-prompt-is...

This bowling alley has just rickrolled its entire clientele. Gotta respect the hustle.

After seeing one too many #ieeevis papers that were clearly resubmits with little or no revision from the previous iteration, we VIS 2025 OPCs just wrote this blog article (ingeniously named if you ask me): ieeevis.org/year/2025/bl...

"This is not vis." I've heard this criticism throughout my entire career. But when does upholding #ieeevis standards cross the line into harmful gatekeeping that stifles innovation? In my new blog post, I argue that our field's vitality depends on embracing new ideas, from accessibility to AI.

Since I’m finding myself in this curious position once more (my fifth time as papers co-chair for #ieeevis), I thought I would post my 2017 blog post on not trying to appealing paper reject decisions (it’s unlikely to work/peer review/not scalable): niklaselmqvist.medium.com/an-appeal-no...

Friendly PSA: When either happily rejoicing or angrily complaining about an accept or reject decision from #ieeevis, remember to remove your friendly neighborhood OPCs from the CC. We don't mind to see these emails (especially the happy ones), but it invariably causes embarrassment after. 😅

New w/ Vaishali Dhanoa, Anton Wolter, @gabymlp.bsky.social, Hans-Jörg Schulz on patterns for "agentic visualization" - AI agents aiding vis w/o losing human agency: - Roles (what agents do) - Communication (how agents share) - Coordination (how agents collaborate) Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2505.19101

It baffles me how some #ieeevis authors cynically resubmit their rejected papers to the conference without making the most basic of revisions. The level of disrespect towards prior reviewers is staggering. No, you can’t just pass off your own failures on “Reviewer 2”. Own them, and revise your work.

VIS and CHI both have two review rounds, but there is a significant difference: VIS summary reviews are supposed to list required changes for acceptance, whereas CHI meta reviews explicitly should NOT include them. #ieeevis PC members should keep this in mind: please DO list required changes. 1/

20 years after "Illuminating the Path" established visual analytics, @clemens.klokmose.net and I wrote "Automating the Path: An R&D Agenda for Human-Centered AI and Visualization" (soon @ieeecga.bsky.social). Read for how HCAI can benefit vis (and vice versa)! arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2504.07529

Datamancer is a wearable system that lets you control multiple screens with hand gestures. Point to select displays, then use bimanual gestures to manipulate data. No more fumbling with mice—just the wave of a hand. To appear at #chi2025 in Yokohama! niklaselmqvist.medium.com/wave-of-hand... 1/2

I'm hiring 1-2 Ph.D. students for human-centered AI in visualization. Research: interpretability, creativity, inclusive access. Come design intelligent systems for complex data interaction w/ me. Backgrounds in HCI, vis, or AI welcome. Design/engineering skills a plus. phd.nat.au.dk/for-applican...

Puzzling change observed from OPCing for VIS 2024 vs. 2025: this year we are getting an onslaught of new people emailing us to volunteer for reviewing, signing up on the review system, and marking themselves as expert in all areas. Volunteering is commendable, but this is fishy...

Friendly PSA for #ieeevis 2025 authors: Yes, PCS is currently closed so you can't upload your supplemental material---don't panic! We're reconfiguring the submission form to allow for supplemental material to be submitted by April 7. Please bear with us!

The fact that the midnight AoE on March 31 deadline for #ieeevis actually means April 1 here is a serious mental health concern for my poor students and a source of infinite joy for me. Sometimes the Venn diagram of dad jokes and advisor jokes is a circle.

"The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." One day I will I find a way to integrate this line into a paper, and that will be a great day.

Thrilled to have Dan Russell here at @csaudk.bsky.social giving his AUCS colloquium on “People, AI, and Online Research”!

Thanks to #ieeevis folks who have accepted our invitation to join the VIS 2025 PC. Unfortunately, out of 265 invitations, 62 have not yet responded (and 48 have declined; 23.6%). We need at least 200+ accepts. If you're still considering, please accept! (Going back to the well means new approvals.)

Congratulations to all of the awardees! It was an honor and a pleasure overseeing the selection process.

Very cool work! This is exactly the kind of research that Sungbok Shin and I hoped someone would do when we proposed our own very limited chart reading model in 2022.

Given the way things are going in the HCI/visualization field, I think it's time I change my lastname to "eLLMqvist." Yay or nay?

Today’s novel HCI term collected from a student mini-essay: “locust of control.” I, for one, welcome our future insectine overlords! 🦗🦗🦗

Pro tip: When giving an invited talk that you will give again in the future, record yourself so that you can transcribe your narrative and clean it up with an LLM. There's nothing quite like trying to remember the words that went with your pretty slides three months after the talk. 😑

I have decided that “congratulations, fellow Fellow” is my favorite genre of email… Big congrats to @jheer.org and Claudio Silva as the two other #ieeevis authors who were elevated to ACM Fellow this year! www.acm.org/media-center...

DashSpace, our platform for web-based collaborative immersive & ubiquitous analytics, is on GitHub: github.com/Webstrates/D... Paper w/ Marcel Borowski, @pwsbutcher.bsky.social, Janus Bager Kristensen, Jonas Oxenbøll Petersen, @ritsosp.bsky.social, @clemens.klokmose.net + me just accepted to TVCG!

I've increasingly found myself talking about the current wave of LLMs in HCI and vis research as a "gold rush", so I thought I should write something about it. I've been guilty of the "thin veneer over GPT" papers myself, but perhaps it's time we go beyond? niklaselmqvist.medium.com/all-that-gli...

‘It’s like replacing a precise surgical instrument with a Swiss Army knife. Yes, the knife is more versatile, but would you want your surgeon using one?’ Lol, yeah. The inferiority of causal language models in most domains is becoming very, very clear.

Right before the new year, here are my latest ruminations on the perils of using natural language as a communication bus—and how it mirrored my own childhood drawings of computer architecture. Let me know what you think! niklaselmqvist.medium.com/the-natural-...

🙋‍♂️ We are still seeking VIS 2025 Program Committee members! Eligible volunteers will have papers published at VIS and related venues, reviewing experience, and an advanced degree in a relevant field. Please volunteer by Dec 20! tinyurl.com/vis25pc

IEEE VIS 2025 Wants You! There is still time until Dec 20 to apply to become a member of the #ieeevis 2025 program committee (PC)! Ph.D., 1+ VIS paper published and 1+ reviewed, and willingness to work hard! Blog post: ieeevis.org/year/2025/bl... Volunteer form: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

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

Honored to have our paper "The Stories We Tell About Data: Surveying Data-Driven Storytelling Using Visualization" being selected as the 2023 best paper for IEEE CG&A. Thank you to the IEEE CS Pub Board for the distinction! PDF: cs.au.dk/~elm/pdf/sto... Announcement: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Inspired by Helwig Hauser's example from a panel at #ieeevis 2018, I dedicate my latest blog post to the unsung hero of my life and academic career: my wife Helene. Without her, I wouldn't be nearly as successful as she has enabled me to be. niklaselmqvist.medium.com/unsung-heroe...

Sometimes the question is the answer: data visualization is all about hypothesis generation. In this post, I speculate on what this could mean for the combination of human-centered AI and visualization: the use of LLMs to capture and iterate on hypotheses. niklaselmqvist.medium.com/when-the-que...

Visualization researchers work with domain experts all the time. Through many collaborations, I've noticed how crucial it is to align expectations from the start. Here I share insights on what makes an effective partnership. What's your experience here? niklaselmqvist.medium.com/what-you-sho...

Some skills, like doing my taxes or filling out travel reimbursement requests, I will happily leave for cognitive atrophy. Others, not so much. In this blog post, I ruminate on how HCAI tools should teach people to fish rather than feed them. niklaselmqvist.medium.com/teach-a-man-...

I’m spending the beginning of the week at Klitgaarden, a former Danish royal summer residence, as part of the Villum Investigator program. Beautiful and inspiring landscape—same thing with the discussions!

Repost (sorry!) of “Great Validations: The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences, and Observations of a Visualization Researcher“, now with the right link: niklaselmqvist.medium.com/great-valida...

New blog post: “Great Validations: The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences, and Observations of a Visualization Researcher” on threats in visualization evaluation across Munzner's nested model. Inspired by the IEEE VIS 2024 panel on evaluation. 🔗 niklaselmqvist.medium.com/great-valida...

Let’s name and shame national funding agencies who don’t pay their reviewers. This cannot come from the researchers who are beholden to their country’s funding agency, so it must come from the rest of us. I’ll go first: Canada’s NSERC. Shame on you. Review is labor and should be compensated.

🚀 What role does #AI play in amplifying and augmenting human abilities? @nelmqvist.bsky.social joins the #HCAI Podcast to discuss the intersection of data visualization, #HCI, and AI tools that empower, not replace, us. 🔗 Listen now hcai.se/podcast/24-1... #humancenteredai #dataviz

Over my 15-year career as a faculty member, I have come up with two surefire ways to Get Sh*t Done: (1) adding something to my calendar ensures that I will attend to it, and (2) adding something to my TODO ensures that I complete it. Pro tip: condition yourself to obeying these two important tools!

🏆 Excited to announce Bongshin Lee as a 2024 VGTC Visualization Technical Achievement Award recipient for groundbreaking works (eng.ox.ac.uk/people/min-c...) in advancing visualization technologies through intuitive interaction designs, data-driven storytelling, and integration of ML.

🏆 Join us in congratulating Mennatallah EI-Assady (el-assady.com) for winning the 2024 VGTC Visualization Significant New Researcher Award, for her groundbreaking work at the intersection of visualization and machine learning.

🚀 Exciting update for #IEEEVIS & #EuroVis! Vispubs now includes links to publication resources. I've already added some preprint and video links in bulk, but if you've published in VIS/EuroVis, it's a breeze to contribute your resources. Check it out: www.vispubs.devinlange.com

Introducing D-Tour at #ieeevis 2024: A new way to view dashboards! 📊 We have developed an interactive approach to dashboard onboarding. D-Tour adapts to user expertise, to make data exploration more engaging. Blog: niklaselmqvist.medium.com/taking-a-d-t... PDF: data.jku-vds-lab.at/papers/2024_...