Paper: Business Data Visualization, Beyond the Boring

The words business and data visualization probably put you to sleep before you even reach the end of this sentence. But wake up! There's actually a lot of interesting work to be done in this area, if only we give it a chance. I think research has ignored this space for too long, and is missing out not only on more ways to create better applications, but to find really interesting research problems to work on.

In this new paper in CG&A Visualization Viewpoints, I cover a range of preconceived ideas that I think keep researchers from wanting to work on business data vis, and point out some interesting research directions.

One of the issues I see is a lack of understanding of who the users really are. There has been some interesting work in recent years, but I think most researchers still chase the idea of a subject matter expert, when most people using data visualization are wearing many hats and need to accomplish many tasks that don't neatly fit into a specific area of expertise.

There are also many things people do in the business world that don't follow the common rules or wisdom of the data vis world, but work despite (or because of) that. Numbers are one example, they're everywhere on business dashboards, and for good reason. How can they be integrated better, rather than be ignored? How can visual preferences, which lead to interesting (and sometimes bad) choices, be incorporated into visualization software? And why are the charts created by modern software so similar and boring? What can we do to make them richer and more attractive at the same time?

I hope that this paper will serve as a bit of a provocation, and to get more people interested in doing research in this area. I point out a number of concrete areas to work on, but obviously there's a lot more to be explored and done. But if data vis research can just tackle a few of these topics, that's a great start.

Robert Kosara, Business Data Visualization, Beyond the Boring, Computer Graphics & Applications (CG&A), vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 153-158, 2024.