Niklas Elmqvist

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 ACM CHI 2025 in Yokohama!

The work was led by @BiswaksenPat@mastodon.social well as colleagues Marcel Borowski, @huaishup@hci.social, and @clemens@social.multiverset.net

Biswaksen is on the job market! You should hire him.

Blog post: https://niklaselmqvist.medium.com/wave-of-hand-command-of-screen-26c295c9e4e8
PDF: https://cs.au.dk/~elm/pdf/datamancer.pdf

DashSpace, our platform for web-based collaborative immersive & ubiquitous analytics, is now on GitHub: https://github.com/Webstrates/DashSpace

Paper w/ Marcel Borowski, Pete Butcher, Janus Bager Kristensen, Jonas Oxenbøll Petersen, @ritsos_p@vis.social, @clemens@social.multiverset.net and I was just accepted to IEEE TVCG!

More details to follow.

I've increasingly found myself talking about the current wave of LLMs in HCI and visualization 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?

https://niklaselmqvist.medium.com/all-that-glitters-is-not-gpt-f4c64c963e44

IEEE VIS 2025 Wants You! There is still time until December 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 in the April to July time frame!

* Blog post: https://ieeevis.org/year/2025/blog/vis-2025-OPC-blog-Volunteers
* Volunteer form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSexXrkTcfThYrzk_mA3WUjR1ufs2JQWXHHwye-wC7rvVPPF8Q/viewform

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. Because of its speculative nature, we had difficulty finding the right home for the paper, but CG&A turned out to be the perfect outlet. Thank you to the IEEE CS Pub Board for the distinction!

* PDF: https://cs.au.dk/~elm/pdf/stories-we-tell.pdf
* arXiV: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.00047
* IEEE DL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10107759
* Announcement: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7272691766703620096/

The end of the year is drawing near and it is time to reflect. 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. https://niklaselmqvist.medium.com/unsung-heroes-8d8b0e73c784

Sometimes the question is the answer. As a form of exploratory data analysis (EDA), data visualization📊 is all about hypothesis generation: finding questions ❓ in unfamiliar data you didn't even know you had. In this blog 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. https://niklaselmqvist.medium.com/when-the-question-is-the-answer-77d9a1ed9078

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 introduce D-Tour: A game-inspired approach to understanding data dashboards! 📊

Our research team has developed an interactive method for dashboard onboarding that adapts to user expertise and is inspired by open-world video games.

- Flexible learning paths for users of all levels
- Efficient authoring for dashboard creators
- Improved engagement with data visualizations

Learn more at the ongoing #ieeevis 2024 conference!

Post: https://niklaselmqvist.medium.com/taking-a-d-tour-7a847dceb2be
PDF: https://data.jku-vds-lab.at/papers/2024_d_tour.pdf

Over the last 11 months since #ieeevis 2023, the VIS 2024 Overall Papers Chairs (OPCs)---Tamara Munzner, Holger Theisel, and I---have been carefully documenting the "Road to VIS 2024" in a series of 11 posts on the @ieeevis@vis.social website. Find them here: https://ieeevis.org/year/2024/blog/index

The goal was to demystify the VIS review process, covering topics from call for papers to final selections. We invited the community to join us in exploring the recently restructured process, aiming for transparency.

Help 🆘---I want to visualize📊 but I have no power! 🔌 🔋

Never fear, color-changing inks are here!🎨 In this newly-accepted IEEE TVCG paper, "Sensemaking Sans Power: Interactive Data Visualization Using Color-Changing Ink", Biswaksen Patnaik, @huaishup@hci.social, and I present an approach for creating entirely analog visualizations that only rely on "smart inks" that change color based on external stimuli---like this toy bus belonging to my 5-year son that will change color based on temperature. 1/