On November 6th 2013, Dr. Wolfgang Aigner successfully defended his habilitation thesis conducted at Vienna University of Technology and titled:
Interactive Visualization and Data Analysis: Visual Analytics With a Focus on Time
As of Nov 2013, Wolfgang is a lecturer at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences in Austria.
The IEG group congratulates Wolfgang for this great success, and wishes him a good start in his new career!
Habilitation Abstract: Today, we are facing the challenge that the possible ways of collecting and storing data are increasing at a faster rate than our ability to analyze it and use it for decision making. Visual Analytics (VA) is an emerging area of research that addresses this challenge by combining the outstanding visual perception and reasoning capabilities of humans with the strengths of automated data analysis of computers. Time is an exceptional dimension with distinct characteristics which demand appropriate visual and automated methods to explore trends, patterns, and relationships. The main objective of the presented research is to account for the complex structure of time in VA. From a methodological perspective the research is driven by the principles of human-centered design and development. In this talk, I will first give an introduction to the field and outline major research challenges. Following this, I will layout the design space and provide a framework for guiding designers of VA systems for time-oriented data. Furthermore, I will present approaches that effectively intertwine visual and automated methods. I will describe the evaluation of such methods and show that the presented results are significant contributions to a number of research challenges in the field.