“Words Divide, Pictures Unite” - Revisiting Otto Neurath’s ISOTYPE at 100
Organized by: Wolfgang Aigner, Eva Mayr, Torsten Möller, Verena Ingrid Prantl, and Florian Windhager
Panelists: Danielle Albers Szafir, Theo Deutinger, Hans-Christian Hege, Samuel Huron, Gunther Sandner, Christiane Thenius
One hundred years after Otto Neurath’s team introduced ISOTYPE—a pioneering method of pictorial statistics designed to make complex data accessible to broad audiences—this panel examines their vision with fresh eyes. Hosted in Vienna, the birthplace of ISOTYPE, and at a moment when visualization’s role in public discourse is more urgent than ever, this panel aims to reflect on the legacy and relevance of ISOTYPE.
What does “visualization for the masses” mean today in an age of data, algorithmic personalization, and fragmented attention? What have we learned from ISOTYPE’s collaborative design approach and its icon-based visual language, and how does its legacy reverberate in today’s visualization projects? Conversely, how would Neurath’s team have been influenced by current work on inclusive design, evaluation, data journalism, or interaction paradigms?
Bringing together historians of visualization, philosophers, designers, critical practitioners, and exhibition curators, the panel aims to connect past and present and situate ISOTYPE within a broader reflection on “visualization for the public”—from democratic communication to visual propaganda, from iconic minimalism to data storytelling for broad audiences.
This panel is related to prior panel discussions at VIS, e.g., on the “Past, Present, and Future of Data Storytelling” (2024), on “Reflecting on Visualization History to Drive Future Innovation’’ (2021), or Visualization for Social Good (2020) It complements earlier thematic discussions by providing direct engagement with ISOTYPE as a historical phenomenon with tangible artifacts and a documented visualization design process, that still informs modern practice.
IEEE VIS Reviewing - On a Path to Self-Destruction?
Organized by: Petra Isenberg, Gunther H. Weber, Niklas Elmqvist, and Narges Mahyar
Panelists: Han-Wei Shen, Michael Sedlmair, Melanie Tory, Helwig Hauser, Bei Wang, Tamara Munzner
This panel will examine concerning trends in IEEE VIS peer review content. We want to celebrate what works but also discuss how the current state of reviewing may be narrowing the field’s scope and even hampering scientific progress. We will discuss five key issues: increased gatekeeping that excludes emerging research areas, bias against incremental work, excessive demands for concrete guide- lines, nitpicking over minor flaws, and subjective opinion-based rejections. These reviewing patterns threaten the multidisciplinary nature of visualization research and may contribute to declining submission rates. The panel will explore how the community can maintain its rigorous standards while fostering inclusive, construc- tive peer review that supports diverse research contributions.
What Does Psychology Really Mean to Visualization Research? Towards PsychXVis and VisXPsych
Organized by: Arran Zeyu Wang and Danielle Albers Szafir
Panelists: Min Chen, Karen Schloss, Alvitta Ottley, Lace Padilla, Cindy Xiong Bearfield, Alex Kale
This panel aims to discuss the critical yet underdeveloped relationship between psychology and visualization (VIS) research. While VIS frequently draws upon psychological principles—particularly in perception and cognition—current integration remains shallow, often relying on heuristics and anecdotal evidence rather than rigorous scientific foundations. This gap hinders the development of generalizable design principles, limits consideration of human factors, and risks creating technically advanced but ineffective or misleading visualizations. Simultaneously, psychology’s growing interest in using visualization as an experimental tool presents future potential for bidirectional collaboration. We anticipate that its output can catalyze deeper, actionable engagement between two fields, including: (1) Promote a psychologically grounded understanding of effective VIS design; (2) Advocate for empirically rigorous, theory-based VIS research; (3) Identify opportunities for VIS to transform psychological inquiry; and (4) Inspire interdisciplinary research directions. Panelists—visualization experts spanning backgrounds on experimental psychology, behavioral psychology, cognitive science, vision science, decision-making, social science, to human personality—will discuss bridging disciplinary divides in publication norms, methods, and terminology. Their diverse backgrounds (e.g., color semantics, uncertainty communication, cognitive interfaces) ensure a comprehensive exploration of how psychology can transform VIS from rule-of-thumb practices to evidence-based principles, while VIS offers novel methodologies for psychological discovery. The discussion responds to rising interest evidenced by past initiatives integrating vision science, a foundational Visualization Psychology book, and an upcoming Dagstuhl seminar, positioning IEEE VIS conferences as vital hubs for this cutting-edge interdisciplinary advancement.
Industry Meets Research: Future Needs and Opportunities for Visual Analytics in Industrial Manufacturing
Organized by: Markus Wagner, Christina Stoiber, Alexander Rind, Tobias Schreck, Marc Streit, and Kresimir Matkovic
Panelists: Christian Mittermayr, Harald Piringer, Lena Cibulski, Jörn Kohlhammer
Industrial manufacturing is increasingly shaped by data-driven processes, making Visual Analytics (VA) a key enabler for innovation. This panel explores how VA can address real-world industrial challenges through academic and industry collaboration. The 90-minute session combines moderated discussion, survey-informed topic selection, and interactive audience tools to ensure broad relevance and engagement. With experts from both domains, the panel will highlight the identified needs along the central Question: How can VA effectively support the evolving demands of industrial manufacturing? The panel aims to outline future directions that align scientific advances with operational needs.
TALK, TRY, TELL: Challenges and Opportunities for Theory-Grounded Data Visualization in Extended Reality
Organized by: Andreas Bueckle, Christiane Hütter, Sebastian Pirch, Felix Müller, Philipp Friedrich, Martin Chiettini, Jörg Menche, and Katy Börner
Panelists: Niklas Elmqvist, Renata G. Raidou, Chris Bryan, Hannes Kaufmann, Peter Mindek
Numerous formalizations have emerged for creating, interpreting, and teaching data visualizations. The past decade has witnessed significant advances in visualization paradigms beyond keyboard and mouse, like immersive analytics. Mature visualization ecosystems are established for screen-based technologies; however, no counterparts have emerged yet in the immersive visualization domain. Consistent implementations are limited due to scattered tools and platforms, while theoretical frameworks require extension to extended reality (XR).
“TALK, TRY, TELL: Challenges and Opportunities for Theory-Grounded Data Visualization in Extended Reality” addresses these gaps through an innovative “TALK, TRY, TELL” format that combines theoretical discourse with hands-on experience. Expert speakers present their own research on theory and practice and examine how established principles translate to immersive environments, representing a diverse and balanced spectrum from XR specialists and information designers, including implementers and theorists (TALK). Following the presentations, attendees will engage with two virtual reality (VR) demonstration applications built on different engines and hardware to exemplify approaches in immersive analytics: biomedical data visualization involving 3D models of adult human anatomy and collaborative network visualization and analysis (TRY).
During the TRY phase, the audience will be invited to share their insights on the individual experiences exhibited via a digital whiteboard (TELL). This format ensures attendees not only understand the conceptual challenges but also experience the perceptual and interaction complexities first-hand. The panel aims to establish a roadmap for developing both theoretical foundations and practical toolkits to advance data visualization in XR as a mature field with strong theory and practice within the visualization community.
From Cognition to Context: A Conversation about Technical Approaches, Social Values, and Tradeoffs in Visualization
Organized by: Lane Harrison, Alex Kale, Miriah Meyer, Carolina Nobre, and Arvind Satyanarayan
Panelists: Karen Schloss, Catherine D’Ignazio, John Burn-Murdoch
Visualization research has traditionally prioritized individual framings of visualization effectiveness, such as perceptual accuracy and cognitive efficiency. While these values have produced foundational contributions, they may not fully account for the goals and constraints of public-facing visualizations—in journalism, advocacy, education, and the arts—where audience diversity, narrative framing, and sociopolitical context play critical roles. This panel brings together a cognitive scientist, a data journalism practitioner, and an interdisciplinary teaching team to discuss how different domains reconcile technical ideals with real-world demands. Through a series of short vignettes, panelists will share concrete examples of value tensions in their work and reflect on how different disciplines—such as communication, media studies, and urban science—might expand the VIS research toolkit. In addition to sparking discussion, the panel will provide attendees with a zine to support continued conversation in labs and classrooms. Ultimately, we aim to encourage deeper reflection on how competing value systems shape visualization practices—and how engaging with them can enhance, rather than undermine, technical rigor.
VisAble: Who do we exclude by current visualization practices and how do we change that?
Organized by: Nina Doerr, Sita Vriend, Katrin Angerbauer, Miriah Meyer, and Michael Sedlmair
Panelists: Dominik Moritz, Cindy Xiong Bearfield, Alice Thudt, Bruce Walker, Kim Marriott, Danielle Albers Szafir
Visualization research is based on the premise of facilitating and fostering the understanding of the underlying data and its phenomena. But how accessible are our visualizations to begin with? Do our visualizations facilitate novices and users of different domains to perceive and understand the data as they aim to? How do we define accessibility? Our panel wants to discuss different dimensions of accessible and inclusive data visualizations and their potential tensions. While current research focuses on making visualization accessible for disabled people, accessibility research also includes elderly people, children, as well as people with different backgrounds, cultural differences, or a lack of data and visualization literacy.