Visualization Techniques (Techniken der Visualisierung) WS'26/27
Vorlesung

News:     

Due to the nature of this lecture (students need to give a presentation followed by a discussion with the class), it has a maximum capacity of 30 places (first come, first serve). Once those places are filled, people who register afterwards will be placed on a waiting list. We keep an attendance record and places will be confirmed after signing the corresponding attendance list on the first day of the lecture (21.10.2026).

We are currently running experiments, please follow this link to participate!

• The maximum number of participants for this lecture has been reached; therefore, those who registered after the limit was met have been placed on the waiting list. (Confirmed participants appear on the sign-in sheet provided in each lecture.)
• the registration is closed.
• Teaching evaluation (Online Lehrevaluation) now open, please fill it under:

  https://umfragen.tu-bs.de/evasys/online.php?pswd=WXWTC
  
  

• The selection period for talks has concluded and all papers have been now assigned.
  
  
• Each student needs to give a short scientific presentation of 14 minutes (+ 3 minutes for questions) on the assigned paper. The presentations should be in English, and can use any desired template. For your convinience, we offer the ICG slides template (but its use is not compulsory).
  
  
• For a more interesting discussion, the students should take a look at the papers that will be presented in each session (see the Agenda section).
• Selection of topic for the talk will start on:  10.11.2025 (09:00 am), and will finish on the 24.11.2025 (09:00 am). First come, first serve, mails before/after these date will be ignored. Please send a list of 3 papers in order of preference (please indicate their ID, e.g., #32). The list of available topics (and their IDs) will be periodically updated to show which ones are still free.
  • When reserving a topic, please also indicate 3 days in order of preference for your day of presentation (3^rd, 10^th and 17^th of December; 7^th, 14^th , 21^st and 28^th January) and we will try to keep it in consideration when arranging the order of the talks.
    
  • You are welcome to propose your own relevant topic, please send an e-Mail with your proposal (including the link to the corresponding paper).
  • All e-Mails should be sent to: tdv@cg.cs.tu-bs.de

• Selection of topic has started, and will finish on the 24.11.2025 (09:00 am). First come, first serve, mails after these date will be ignored and will result on not having a presentation. Please send a list of 3 papers in order of preference (please indicate their ID, e.g., #32). The list of available topics (and their IDs) will be periodically updated to show which ones are still free.
  • When reserving a topic, please also indicate 3 days in order of preference for your day of presentation (3^rd, 10^th and 17^th of December; 7^th, 14^th , 21^st and 28^th January) and we will try to keep it in consideration when arranging the order of the talks.
    
  • You are welcome to propose your own relevant topic, please send an e-Mail with your proposal (including the link to the corresponding paper).
  • All e-Mails should be sent to: tdv@cg.cs.tu-bs.de

• For those students for whom the lecture is offered as a 5-credits course, they need to turn in a 10-page write-up on their selected paper including additional background. The deadline to submit the report is the 04.02.2025  (23:59). Submission shall be done via email to tdv@cg.cs.tu-bs.de. 
• Template for the Report. Using this template is recommended but not mandatory.

Notes:                 

• This lecture does not use studIP. Please register to attend the lecture using the registration form on our website (https://www.graphics.tu-bs.de/teaching/students). This way we can notify you of any current changes. This registration is informal and does not replace the official examination registration at the respective examination office (if required for your course of studies).

• If you encounter any problems, please send an email to tdv@cg.cs.tu-bs.de.

• The lecture will be conducted in English.

• Lecture starts on the 21.10.2026

Description:

Photos, drawings, maps, diagrams, pictograms, cartoons, text, formulas, PowerPoint presentations...: Our sense of sight is the most important information input channel into our consciousness. Whether representational or abstract information, a suitable form of visualization enables us to grasp the meaning of information faster and more fundamentally than, for example, when we just hear the information.

The lecture will explore the background of information visualization from the perspective of computer science, psychology, and neuroscience. We will deal with questions like

• What is information?
• What forms of information exist?
• How does visual information enter our consciousness?
• How can information be visualized?
• What forms of visualization are there?
• What is attention?
• How is attention aroused visually?
• How is visual information stored in the brain?

The course is explicitly aimed at students of ALL disciplines and is also offered as a key qualification in the lecture pool "interdisciplinary qualification".

Place and time:

• Every Wednesday from 13:15 to 14:45
• Room IZ 161 (Lecture is exclusively conducted in presence)
  
• Lecture period: 19th October 2026 - 6th February 2027
• Begin: 21.10.2026

Contents:

• History of Visualization
• Our Visual Brain
• Perception in Visualization
• Visual Information Coding
• Good and Bad Design in Visualization

Administrative formalities:

• Duration: 2 SWS
• Credit points: Depending on your Prüfungsordnung (PO) -- 3 or 5 ECTS
• Grading: This is a "Studienleistung" lecture (Pass / Fail), therefore, there is no numerical grade attached,
• Examination modality: Presentation or Presentation + Written Report
• In order to obtain the course credits, each participant must prepare and give a short scientific presentation of around 12-14 minutes in length on one of the suggested papers. Additionally, for those students for whom the lecture is offered as a 5-credits course, they need to turn in a 10-page write-up on their selected paper including additional background. Topics will be assigned in November.
• Attendance of at least 50% of all sessions is required to acquire the study credit points.

Prerequisites:

• Interest in perception and the human visual system

Recommended Literature:

• Ward, Grinstein, and Keim. Interactive Data Visualization, AK Peters, 2010.
• Ware. Information Visualization, Elsevier, 2012.
• Munzner. Visualization Analysis and Design, AK Peters Visualization Series, CRC Press, 2014

Tips on How to Give a Talk:

•    Giving a research talk. Short pdf with recommendations by Fredo Durand (MIT CSAIL)

•    How to give a talk (that doesn't put your audience to sleep). Slides by  Ramesh Raskar (MIT Media Lab)

Topics:

Selection of topic for the talk will start on:10.11.2025 (09:00 am). Mails before that date will be ignored.

• Treisman, "Preattentive Processing in Vision",1985 - Paper ID #01
• Tufte, "Escaping Flatland",1990, pp 11-35 - Paper ID #02
• Tufte,"Micro / Macro Readings",1990, pp 37-52 - Paper ID #03
• Tufte, "Color and Information",1990, pp 81-95 - Paper ID #04
• Tufte, "Narratives of Space and Time",1990, pp 97-120 - Paper ID #05
• Rogowitz et al., "How NOT to Lie with Visualization", 1996 - Paper ID #06
• Rheingans, "Task-based Color Scale Design", 1999 - Paper ID #07
• Matzen et al. "Data visualization saliency model", 2017 - Paper ID #08
• Rayner et al., "So Much to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help?", 2016 - Paper ID #09
• Szafir, "Modeling Color Difference for Visualization Design", 2017 - PaperID #10
• Schneiderman, "The Eyes Have It: A Task by Data Type Taxonomy for Information Visualizations", 1996 - PaperID #11
• Friedman and Tukey, "A Projection Pursuit Algorithm for Exploratory Data Analysis",1974 -PaperID #12
• Inselberg and Dimsdale, "Parallel Coordinates: A Tool for Visualizing Multi-Dimensional Geometry", 1990 - Paper ID #13
• Wilkinson, "Graph-Theoretic Scagnostics", 1995 - Paper ID #14
• Cioca and Nerisanu, "Enhancing Creativity: Using Visual Mnemonic Devices in the Teaching Process to Develop Creativity in Students", 2020 - Paper ID #15
• Stone, "Choosing Colors for Data Visualization", 2006 - Paper ID #16
• Rosenholtz, "What your visual system sees where you are not looking", 2011 - Paper ID #17
• Holten, "Hierarchical Edge Bundles: Visualization of Adjacency Relations in Hierarchical Data", 2006 - Paper ID #18
• Borland and Taylor, "Rainbow Color Map (Still) Considered Harmful", 2007 - Paper ID #19
• Zeileis et al., "Escaping RGBland: Selecting colors for statistical graphics", 2009 - Paper ID #20
• Livingstone and Hubel, "Segregation of Form, Color, Movement, and Depth: Anatomy, Physiology, and Perception", 1988 - Paper ID #21
• Zeileis and Hornik, "Choosing Color Palettes for Statistical Graphics", 2006 - PaperID #22
• Ware, "Color sequences for univariate maps: theory, experiments and principles", 1988 - PaperID #23
• Kleffner and Ramachandran, "On the perception of shape from shading", 1992 - PaperID #24
• Friendly et al., "A brief history of data visualization", 2008 - PaperID #25
• Cleveland and McGill, "A Color-Caused Optical Illusion on a Statistical Graph", 1983 - PaperID #26
• Barrett et al., "Perceptual Measures For Effective Visualizations", 2002 - PaperID #27
• Pandey et al., "The Persuasive Power of Data Visualization", 2014 - Paper ID #28
• Teutscher et al., "Interactive Scientific Visualization of Fluid Flow Simulation Data Using AR Technology- OpenVisFlow", 2022 - PaperID #29
• Bondarev and Galaktionov, "Current Visualization Trends in CFD Problems", 2014 - PaperID #30
• Born et al., "Stent maps – Comparative visualization for the prediction of adverse events of transcatheter aortic valve implantations", 2014 - PaperID #31
• Patchett et al., "Visualization and Analysis of Threats from Asteroid Ocean Impacts", 2016 - PaperID #32
• Axelsson et al., "Dynamic Scene Graph: Enabling Scaling, Positioning and Navigation in the Universe", 2017 - PaperID #33
• Rhyne., "Computer games' influence on scientific and information visualization", 2000 - Paper ID #34
• Blascheck and Ertl, "Towards Analyzing Eye Tracking Data for Evaluating Interactive Visualization Systems", 2014 - PaperID #35
• Judd et al., "Learning to predict where humans look", 2009 - Paper ID #36
• Schmitz et al., "Interactive Segmentation of Textured Point Clouds", 2022 - PaperID #37
• Ehgartner et al., "Visualizing the Movement of Space-Defining Rotatable Elements in Architecture", 2022 - PaperID #38
• Pu et al., "Datamations: Animated Explanations of Data Analysis Pipelines", 2021 - PaperID #39
• Bender et al., "Honeycomb Plots: Visual Enhancements for Hexagonal Maps", 2022 - Paper ID #40
• Wisessing et al., "Perception of lighting and shading for animated virtual characters", 2016 - Paper ID #41
• Brinkman et al., "Visualizing mental representations in schizophrenia patients: A reverse correlation approach ", 2019 - Paper ID #42
• Moore, "Data Visualization in support of Executive Decision Making", 2017 - PaperID #43
• Kosara, "Presentation-Oriented Visualization Techniques", 2016 - Paper ID #44
• Koval & Jansen, "Do You See What You Mean? Using Predictive Visualizations to Reduce Optimism in Duration Estimates", 2022 - Paper ID #45
• Wang et al., "DRAVA: Aligning Human Concepts with Machine Learning Latent Dimensions for the Visual Exploration of Small Multiples", 2023 - Paper ID #46
• Ahn et al., "ESCAPE: Countering Systematic Errors from Machine’s Blind Spots via Interactive Visual Analysis", 2023 - PaperID #47
• Lisnic et al., "Misleading Beyond Visual Tricks: How People Actually Lie with Charts", 2023 - Paper ID #48
• Burns et al., "Who Do We Mean When We Talk About Visualization Novices?", 2023 - PaperID #49
• Gutwin et al., "Showing Flow: Comparing Usability of Chord and Sankey Diagrams", 2023 - PaperID #50
• Lu et al., "Interactive Context-Preserving Color Highlighting for Multiclass Scatterplots", 2023 - PaperID #51
• Yang et al., "How Can Deep Neural Networks Aid Visualization Perception Research?", 2023 - PaperID #52
• Tseng et al., "Measuring Categorical Perception in Color-Coded Scatterplots", 2023 - Paper ID #53
• Zhao et al., "Graphical Perception of Saliency-based Model Explanations", 2023 - Paper ID #54
• Zeng et al., "A Review and Collation of Graphical Perception Knowledge for Visualization Recommendation", 2023 - Paper ID #55
• Vieth et al.,"Interactions for Seamlessly Coupled Exploration of High-Dimensional Images and Hierarchical Embeddings", 2023 - PaperID #56
• Opitz et al.,"Perceptually Guided Automatic Parameter Optimization for Interactive Visualization", 2023 - PaperID #57
• Farokhmanesh et al.,"Neural Fields for Interactive Visualization of Statistical Dependencies in 3D Simulation Ensembles", 2023 - PaperID #58
• Krause et al.,"Visually Analyzing Topic Change Points in Temporal Text Collections", 2023 - PaperID #59
• Graniczkowska et al.,"Factors Influencing Visual Comparison of Colored Directed Acyclic Graphs ", 2023 - PaperID #60
• Yang and Pajarola,"Visual-assisted Outlier Preservation for Scatterplot Sampling", 2023 - PaperID #61
• Gol et al.,"XMTC: Explainable Early Classification of Multivariate Time Series in Reach-to-Grasp Hand Kinematics", 2025 - PaperID #62
• Sachdeva et al.,"Val-LLM: A Visual Analytics Approach for the Critical Validation of LLM-Generated Tabular Data", 2025 - PaperID #63
• Thane et al.,"Uncovering Relations in High-Dimensional Behavioural Data of Drosophila Melanogaster", 2025 - PaperID #64
• Hrycak and Krüger,"An Investigation of the Apple Vision Pro for Out-of-Core Ray-Guided Volume Rendering with BorgVR", 2025 - PaperID #65
• Schneegans et al.,"Physically Based Real-Time Rendering of Eclipses", 2025 - PaperID #66
• Lerzer and Dachsbacher,"View-Dependent Visibility Optimization for Monte Carlo Volume Visualization", 2025 - PaperID #67
• Khalaila et al.,"They Aren’t Built For Me”: An Exploratory Study of Strategies for Measurement of Graphical Primitives in Tactile Graphics", 2025 - PaperID #68
• Cutler et al.,"ReVISit 2: A Full Experiment Life Cycle User Study Framework", 2025 - PaperID #69
• Parsons and Shukla,"Beyond Problem Solving: Framing and Problem–Solution Co‑Evolution in Data Visualization Design", 2025 - PaperID #70
• Ai et al.,"NLI4VolVis: Natural Language Interaction for Volume Visualization via LLM Multi‑Agents and Editable 3D Gaussian Splatting", 2025 - PaperID #71
• Sun et al.,"EvoRiver: Visual Analysis of Topic Coopetition on Social Media", 2014 - PaperID #72
• Yin et al.,"Blowing Seeds Across Gardens: Visualizing Implicit Propagation of Cross-Platform Social Media Posts", 2025 - PaperID #73

Agenda:

Please note that the agenda is tentative at the moment. Check frequently for updates.