EVL PhD candidate, Jillian Aurisano present her research in data visualization and exploration using a conversational interface.

Visual data exploration poses challenges for ’InfoVis Novices’. A ’conversational interface’ which would enable users to generate and interact with visualizations through natural language and gestures, while maintaining a history of the data exploration, has the potential to ameliorate many of these challenges. We performed an exploratory, observational study designed to examine the role of such a conversational interface in visual data exploration. We simulated a conversational interface, using a remote human mediator, with multiple cycles of visualization construction. We believe analysis of this data will yield concrete design goals for conversational interfaces in information visualization. Research results and future work will be presented.