Arpit Narechania

@ieeevis.bsky.social @vgtc.bsky.social @computersociety.bsky.social @datavisards.bsky.social

Overview of the DataVisards group with thumbnails of the group members and research themes.

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Tech Visualization Lab, where I was advised by Dr. Alex Endert.

I am now an Assistant Professor at HKUST, where I direct the DataVisards lab. We "build cool tools" using visual analytics, HCI, and AI. Come join us!

Overview of the dissertation showing the 10 project titles along with image thumbnails and corresponding publication details.

You can read this dissertation at narechania.com/docs/arpit_n....

I particularly encourage you to read the Acknowledgements chapter to get to know everyone who played a part in this quest and how.

VGTC Visualization Dissertation Award Plaque

VGTC Chair Professor David Ebert announcing the award recipient and the corresponding citation.

Arpit giving an acceptance speech with his presentation slides in the background.

🏆 Incredibly honored to receive the 2025 IEEE VGTC Visualization Dissertation Award for my Ph.D. thesis titled "Designing, Developing, and Democratizing Guidance for Visual Analytics."

I accepted this award at the #ieeevis conference last week in Vienna.

Thrilled to share Exploropleth - our new #GIS #dataviz tool.

💡 @Mapmakers, you can simultaneously explore & compare 16+ data binning methods on a choropleth map, directly in your browser!

🎓 @Instructors, you can use the tool to teach how choropleth maps can mislead people!

exploropleth.github.io

Thrilled to share Exploropleth - our new #GIS #dataviz tool.

💡 @Mapmakers, you can simultaneously explore & compare 16+ data binning methods on a choropleth map, directly in your browser!

🎓 @Instructors, you can use the tool to teach how choropleth maps can mislead people!

exploropleth.github.io

Screenshot of the first page of the research article showing its title, authors, abstract, and part of the introduction.

🙏 Big thanks to my coauthors: Alex Endert from the Georgia Tech Visualization Lab & Atanu R Sinha from Adobe Research.

📄 Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2502.00682
📹 Video Overview: youtu.be/ASgLVAljtHk
🎙️ Recorded Talk: youtu.be/eh1WVYl25Dk

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🤔 Interestingly, participants in the 🤖AI condition reported both higher post-task benefit & regret.

This highlights the importance of understanding how different guidance sources impact user behavior (espec. AI), which can help design more effective guidance systems!

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🥁 The result? Guidance Source Matters!

Participants utilized guidance differently during analysis, including expressing varying levels of regret, even when its quality was constant!

E.g., those receiving guidance selected a lot more attributes than those without it!

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💡 Participants could request guidance from their assigned guidance source, in the form of attribute recommendations, one by one, up to 10 times.

We held the quality of guidance constant across all sources (7 relevant & 3 irrelevant recommendations, randomly sequenced)

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🎯 We conducted a study with 5 conditions:

1. 🤖 AI
2. 🧙 Human Expert
3. 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Group of Analysts
4. 💡 Unattributed Guidance (no source attribution)
5. ❌ No Guidance (control)

We tasked participants to analyze a dataset, select relevant attributes & make #dataviz for a biz report.

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Teaser figure showing our study prototype for visual data preparation and analysis, with a Data Attributes View on the left (showing the list of data attributes of an uploaded dataset), a Data Records View in the center (showing summary statistics and individual records for an attribute), and a Guidance Panel to request guidance (in the form of data attribute recommendations to shortlist) on the right.

❓Do people’s perception & utilization of guidance change during analysis if they know its source, e.g., if it came from 🤖AI, 🧙Human Expert, or 🧑‍🤝‍🧑Group of Human Analysts?

✨Thrilled to share our new #iui2025 paper, presented last week at ACM IUI in Cagliari, Italy.

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Arpit Narechania Hi, I am Arpit Narechania. I am an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). I received my Ph.D. from Georgi...

Find more information about my work on my personal website at narechania.com

Find more information about the HKUST #CSE PhD program at cse.hkust.edu.hk/pg/admissions/

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Are you looking for #PhD student positions in data visualization, visual analytics, #HCI research?

I am recruiting multiple #PhD students (fully funded) to join my group at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology #HKUST in Fall 2025.

If interested, EMAIL me! Reposts appreciated 🙏 [1/2]