Research Publications

Vega is the result of an active research program, whose roots span over a decade of data visualization systems research. This page lists research papers about Vega’s design & implementation, new tools enabled by Vega, and prior work on visualization systems that have deeply influenced Vega.

Language Design & Implementation

Vega-Lite: A Grammar of Interactive Graphics. Arvind Satyanarayan, Dominik Moritz, Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Jeffrey Heer. IEEE Trans. Visualization & Comp. Graphics (Proc. InfoVis), 2017. Best Paper Award

Towards A General-Purpose Query Language for Visualization Recommendation. Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Dominik Moritz, Anushka Anand, Jock Mackinlay, Bill Howe, Jeffrey Heer. ACM SIGMOD Human-in-the-Loop Data Analysis (HILDA), 2016

Reactive Vega: A Streaming Dataflow Architecture for Declarative Interactive Visualization. Arvind Satyanarayan, Ryan Russell, Jane Hoffswell, Jeffrey Heer. IEEE Trans. Visualization & Comp. Graphics (Proc. InfoVis), 2016.

Declarative Interaction Design for Data Visualization. Arvind Satyanarayan, Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Jeffrey Heer. ACM User Interface Software & Technology (UIST), 2014.

Tools & Models Enabled by Vega

Formalizing Visualization Design Knowledge as Constraints: Actionable and Extensible Models in Draco. Dominik Moritz, Chenglong Wang, Gregory Nelson, Halden Lin, Adam M. Smith, Bill Howe, Jeffrey Heer. IEEE Trans. Visualization & Comp. Graphics (Proc. InfoVis), 2019. Best Paper Award

Voyager 2: Augmenting Visual Analysis with Partial View Specifications. Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Zening Qu, Dominik Moritz, Riley Chang, Felix Ouk, Anushka Anand, Jock Mackinlay, Bill Howe, Jeffrey Heer. ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2017.

GraphScape: A Model for Automated Reasoning about Visualization Similarity and Sequencing. Younghoon Kim, Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Jessica Hullman, Jeffrey Heer. ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2017. Best Paper Honorable Mention

Visual Debugging Techniques for Reactive Data Visualization. Jane Hoffswell, Arvind Satyanarayan, Jeffrey Heer. Computer Graphics Forum (Proc. EuroVis), 2016.

Voyager: Exploratory Analysis via Faceted Browsing of Visualization Recommendations. Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Dominik Moritz, Anushka Anand, Jock Mackinlay, Bill Howe, Jeffrey Heer. IEEE Trans. Visualization & Comp. Graphics (Proc. InfoVis), 2016.

Lyra: An Interactive Visualization Design Environment. Arvind Satyanarayan, Jeffrey Heer. Computer Graphics Forum (Proc. EuroVis), 2014.

Prior Research

D3: Data-Driven Documents. Michael Bostock, Vadim Ogievetsky, Jeffrey Heer. IEEE Trans. Visualization & Comp. Graphics (Proc. InfoVis), 2011.

Declarative Language Design for Interactive Visualization. Jeffrey Heer, Michael Bostock. IEEE Trans. Visualization & Comp. Graphics (Proc. InfoVis), 2010. Best Paper Honorable Mention

Protovis: A Graphical Toolkit for Visualization. Michael Bostock, Jeffrey Heer. IEEE Trans. Visualization & Comp. Graphics (Proc. InfoVis), 2009.

Software Design Patterns for Information Visualization. Jeffrey Heer, Maneesh Agrawala. IEEE Trans. Visualization & Comp. Graphics (Proc. InfoVis), 12(5), pp. 853-860, 2006.

Prefuse: A Toolkit for Interactive Information Visualization. Jeffrey Heer, Stuart K. Card, James Landay. ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), pp. 421-430, 2005.