KnowledgePearls: Provenance-Based Visualization Retrieval

Holger Stitz, Samuel Gratzl, Harald Piringer, Thomas Zichner, Marc Streit
2018 IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics  
Fig. 1 . Our Gapminder -inspired prototype implemented in Vega (a) with a captured provenance graph (b) consisting of three stories from Hans Rosling's presentations. Users can query the provenance graph for visualization states using the search side panel (c). Abstract-Storing analytical provenance generates a knowledge base with a large potential for recalling previous results and guiding users in future analyses. However, without extensive manual creation of meta information and annotations
more » ... y the users, search and retrieval of analysis states can become tedious. We present KnowledgePearls, a solution for efficient retrieval of analysis states that are structured as provenance graphs containing automatically recorded user interactions and visualizations. As a core component, we describe a visual interface for querying and exploring analysis states based on their similarity to a partial definition of a requested analysis state. Depending on the use case, this definition may be provided explicitly by the user by formulating a search query or inferred from given reference states. We explain our approach using the example of efficient retrieval of demographic analyses by Hans Rosling and discuss our implementation for a fast look-up of previous states. Our approach is independent of the underlying visualization framework. We discuss the applicability for visualizations which are based on the declarative grammar Vega and we use a Vega-based implementation of Gapminder as guiding example. We additionally present a biomedical case study to illustrate how KnowledgePearls facilitates the exploration process by recalling states from earlier analyses.
doi:10.1109/tvcg.2018.2865024 pmid:30136970 fatcat:stdcdtlcovgizdxwjbg4ceohzi