Visualization Autocomplete: Visualization Authoring via Stepwise Design Recommendations
Authors
Hyeon Jeon (Seoul National University), Sungbok Shin (Sogang University), Niklas Elmqvist (Aarhus University)
Presentation
- Session
- How can I do this myself?
- Time
- Thursday, Nov 12, 08:00 – 08:12 (US/Eastern) · session 08:00 – 09:30
- Location
- Hall America center
Links
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Keywords
Visualization authoring, visualization design process, visualization recommendation, human-centered AI, human agency, automation, mixed-initiative interaction
Abstract
When domain experts create charts, the bottleneck is rarely the data, but knowing the optimal next step in chart design. The visualization design space is vast, and while domain experts can recognize a good design when they see it, it is often challenging to determine the exact path to get there. To address this, we present VISAUTOCOMPLETE, a system inspired by text autocompletion that reconceptualizes visualization design as a sequential process, recommending concrete next steps at each stage of the authoring process based on common practices. Users can intervene at any step, or delegate multiple steps to the system and select one from the design recommendations. To support responsive interaction, we distill the translation logic of a large language model (LLM) into a single function that receives the current chart state and recommended transition as input and returns the updated chart specification as output. We evaluate the system against a LLM vibecoding, Microsoft Excel, and TaskVis, an automated chart recommendation engine, on chart quality and approachability. Our results show that VisAutocomplete outperforms all baselines in the articulacy of complex chart authoring, while remaining on par with LLM in approachability.
For Practitioners
Data Scientists Visualization Designers, Visualization Researchers, Novices without Visualization Expertise.