Authoring tools for creative data communication

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Contract type : Fixed-term contract

Level of qualifications required : Graduate degree or equivalent

Fonction : Temporary scientific engineer

About the research centre or Inria department

The Inria Saclay-Île-de-France Research Centre was established in 2008. It has developed as part of the Saclay site in partnership with Paris-Saclay University and with the Institut Polytechnique de Paris .

The centre has 40 project teams , 32 of which operate jointly with Paris-Saclay University and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Its activities occupy over 600 people, scientists and research and innovation support staff, including 44 different nationalities.

Context

This work is funded by the ANR project ANR-21-CE33-0002 GLACIS. It may eventually prepare a PhD thesis on generative creation tools.

Assignment

Visualizations are widely used to summarize complex data, illustrate problems and solutions, tell stories over data, or shape public attitudes. This project investigates interactive tools and techniques that can help graphic designers, illustrators, data journalists, and infographic artists produce creative and effective visualizations for communication purposes, e.g., to inform the public about global-warming predictions or to incite people to reflect on the impact of human activities.

A key challenge for many creators is how to rapidly generate visuals to iterate on ideas. Dominant visualization systems target data-exploration and data-analysis tasks and fail to meet communication purposes [Kosara, 2016]. Previous studies [Bigelow, 2014] also suggest that current visualization tools impose a data-to-graphics workflow that hinders visual thinking. As a result, the process of creating an original infographic can be extremely manual, involving multiple tools that are largely disconnected from the underlying data.

In this research, we aim to address the more ambitious goal of computer-aided design that treats infographic creation as a visual-thinking process. This process is driven by the graphics, starting from sketches, moving to generative parametric instructions, which can then re-feed the designer’s sketches and graphics. This work will be based our visualisation authoring systems designed in our team, such as StructGraphics [Tsandilas, 2021] and DataGarden [Offenwanger, 2024]. Drawing inspiration from the creative power of generative models [Schetinger, 2023] and in close interaction with visual artists, our goal is to develop a set of tools that help creators generate organic visual representations and bind their visual parameters to the dimensions of their data.

Main activities

The steps that we envision are:

  1. Running a study with creators to understand their workflows and identify storytelling tech- niques they use to communicate information to their audience.

  2. Develop an interactive tool that helps them quicky express and evaluate their storytelling ideas without necessary having to code.

References

A. Bigelow, S. Drucker, D. Fisher, and M. Meyer. Reflections on how designers design with data. In Proc. AVI, 2014.

R. Kosara. Presentation-oriented visualization techniques. IEEE Comp. Graph. and Applications, 36(1):80–85, Jan 2016.

Schetinger, V., Di Bartolomeo, S., El-Assady, M., McNutt, A. M., Miller, M., & Adams. Doom or deliciousness: challenges and opportunities for visualization in the age of generative models. Computer Graphics Forum— EuroVis/CGF. 2023.

A. Offenwanger, T. Tsandilas, and F. Chevalier. DataGarden: Formalizing Personal Sketches into Structured Visualization Templates. To appear at VIS 2024 (IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer
Graphics). https://datagarden-git.github.io/datagarden

T. Tsandilas. StructGraphics: Flexible Visualization Design through Data-Agnostic and Reusable Graphical Structures. IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics, pp. 315-325,
2021. https://www.lri.fr/~fanis/StructGraphics

Skills

The candidate should have a M2 degree, a background in Human-Computer Interaction, and experience with creativity-support tools. 

Benefits package

  • Subsidized meals
  • Partial reimbursement of public transport costs
  • Leave: 7 weeks of annual leave + 10 extra days off due to RTT (statutory reduction in working hours) + possibility of exceptional leave (sick children, moving home, etc.)
  • Possibility of teleworking and flexible organization of working hours
  • Professional equipment available (videoconferencing, loan of computer equipment, etc.)
  • Social, cultural and sports events and activities
  • Access to vocational training
  • Social security coverage

Remuneration

Regarding professional experience