Abstract
While many visualization tools exist that offer sophisticated functions for charting complex data, they still expect users to possess a high degree of expertise in wielding the tools to create an effective visualization. This paper presents Articulate, an attempt at a semi-automated visual analytic model that is guided by a conversational user interface to allow users to verbally describe and then manipulate what they want to see. We use natural language processing and machine learning methods to translate the imprecise sentences into explicit expressions, and then apply a heuristic graph generation algorithm to create a suitable visualization. The goal is to relieve the user of the burden of having to learn a complex user-interface in order to craft a visualization.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Silicon Republic News, http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14758/randd/googles-top-inventor-says-talking-computers-are-the-future
Ebert, D., Gaither, K., Gilpin, C.: Enabling science discoveries through visual exploration. In: NSF Workshop report, Washington, D.C (2007)
Zue, V., Glass, J.R.: Conversational Interfaces: Advances and Challenges. Proceedings of the IEEE, 1166–1180 (2000)
Mackinlay, J.D., Hanrahan, P., Stolte, C.: Show me: Automatic presentation for visual analysis. IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics 13, 1137–1144 (2007)
Salama, C.R., Keller, M., Kohlmann, P.: High-level user interfaces for transfer function design with semantics. IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics 12, 1021–1028 (2006)
Santos, E., Lins, L., Ahrens, J., Freire, J., Silva, C.: VisMashup: Streamlining the Creation of Custom Visualization Applications. IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics 15, 1539–1546 (2009)
Zue, V., Seneff, S., Glass, J.R., Polifroni, J., Pao, C., Hazen, T.J., Hetherington, L.: JUPlTER: a telephone-based conversational interface for weather information. IEEE Trans. on Speech and Audio Processing 8, 85–96 (2000)
Seneff, S., Polifroni, J.: Dialogue management in the Mercury flight reservation system. In: ANLP/NAACL 2000 Workshop on Conversational systems, pp. 11–16 (2000)
Sherwani, J., Ali, N., Tongia, R., Rosenfeld, R., Memon, Y., Karim, M., Pappas, G.: HealthLine: Towards Speech-based Access to Health Information by Semi-literate Users. In: Proc. Speech in Mobile and Pervasive Environments, Singapore (2007)
Cox, K., Grinter, R.E., Hibino, S.L., Jagadeesan, L.J., Mantilla, D.: A Multi-Modal Natural Language Interface to an Information Visualization Environment. J. of Speech Technology 4, 297–314 (2001)
Wolfram Research, http://www.wolframalpha.com
The Stanford Parser, http://nlp.stanford.edu/software/lex-parser.shtml
Abela, A.: Advanced Presentations by Design: Creating Communication that Drives Action. Pfeiffer (2008)
Tukey, J.W.: Exploratory Data Analysis. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1977)
Quinlan, J.R.: C4.5: Programs for Machine Learning. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (1993)
WordNet, http://wordnet.princeton.edu/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sun, Y., Leigh, J., Johnson, A., Lee, S. (2010). Articulate: A Semi-automated Model for Translating Natural Language Queries into Meaningful Visualizations. In: Taylor, R., Boulanger, P., Krüger, A., Olivier, P. (eds) Smart Graphics. SG 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6133. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13544-6_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13544-6_18
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-13543-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-13544-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)