Robert Semper, Chief Science Officer, and Jennifer Frazier, Senior Scientist at the Exploratorium, describe the importance of visualizing data and outline goals for the conference: bring together experts and practitioners, promote dialogue, identify successes and failures, and surface future research and development to guide the field. 

Stamen Design founder Eric Rodenbeck discusses the intellectual power of data visualizations especially when data is fuzzy and open to human imagination and interpretation. But he strikes a cautionary note about the vast amount of data available in the cloud that consumes staggering amounts of energy and can leave us “lost in a sea of information.” 

University of Utah biochemist Janet Iwasa discusses the importance of visualization in forming scientific hypotheses. Visualizing protein function, a major driver of cellular processes, requires many types of data in visualizations. Translating their hypotheses into 3-D animations allow biochemists to communicate, critique, and refine the research. 

Exploratorium learning researcher Joyce Ma discusses lessons learned from the Living Liquid project, which allows visitors to explore ocean data sets with an interactive touch table. She covers the importance of building multidisciplinary teams, thoughtful curation of data sets, providing visitors with immediate access to data, and facilitating interactive exploration of data visualizations.

New York Times reporter and graphics editor Nadja Popovich discusses the ways that visualizations of global climate change can be personalized. By inviting the audience to engage and customize climate data through online media, the visualization designers can humanize the data and create a deeper understanding of how global phenomena will impact readers personally.

University of British Columbia computer scientist Tamara Munzner describes how research into the individual elements of data visualizations can help guide design choices for creating more intuitive visualizations and avoiding unnecessary confusion. 

Northwestern University cognitive psychologist Steve Franconeri describes how the “curse of knowledge” can lead to data visualizations that are easily interpreted by experts but ambiguous or confusing to new users. To avoid this pitfall, Franconeri points to the way data journalists use text annotations and highlights. 

Indiana University PhD candidate Andreas Bueckle describes research on public data literacy in museums, and how user-driven visualization design can help public audiences better understand what might otherwise be abstract concepts or unfamiliar visualization types. 

Columbia University professor Barbara Tversky describes how visual representations can be empowered through narrative, providing them with agency, emotion, and suspense. Research shows that some visual elements have particular meaning compared with others. 

Professor of Computer Graphics Technology Vetria Byrd discusses efforts to broaden the data visualization field, beginning with a diversity workshop she organized at Clemson University, which led to the creation of a new undergraduate major at Purdue Polytechnic Institute where she  teaches. Drawing on fields from engineering to the arts, she encourages and trains students to tell stories with data visualization.

Co-director of Google’s Big Picture team Fernanda Viégas describes how real-time data visualizations allow users to engage with data in more intuitive and relatable ways. She presented the “Digital Attack Map,” which shows the origin and target countries of hackers attempting to cripple computer servers worldwide, and “Wind Map,” a real-time forecast of winds displayed as dynamic lines that users can explore. 

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Senior Program Manager Carrie McDougall discusses Science On a Sphere (SOS), a visualization technology that projects dynamic and massive data sets on a large spherical display. Installed in 150 different locations, SOS provides public audience access to spherically rendered depictions of ocean, weather, and climate data. 

Bryan Kennedy, Director of Museum Technology and Digital Operations at the Science Museum of Minnesota, describes xMacroscope and how the project is both designing and developing technology platforms and exhibits and conducting learning research to understand and improve how the public understands and engages with data visualization. 

University of Arizona environmental scientist Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta talks about the importance of involving the public in co-creating data visualizations. She presents two projects that used data collected by citizen scientists and, through workshops and customized data visualizations, helped them assess health risks from environmental contaminants. 

Heather Segale, Education and Outreach Director for the Lake Tahoe Environmental Research Center, describes how the UC Davis facility connects visitors to place through interactive data exhibits and visualizations. The AR Sandbox exhibit uses projections to encourage visitors to explore the topography and hydrology of Lake Tahoe. A touch-screen exhibit provides real-time and historical data. 

Ryan Wyatt, Director of the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences, discusses the unique exhibition space of domes. Dome shows are most effective when they start at human scales and put people at the center of the action. He cautioned that data visualizations should be as simple as possible to avoid cognitive overload. 

Exploratorium Senior Artist Susan Schwartzenberg describes the Fisher Bay Observatory, which focuses on environmental science and the history of San Francisco Bay. Exhibits and displays include a map collection, real-time and past environmental data exhibits, and a carved topographic table on which datasets, such as sea-level rise, earthquake faultlines, and fog patterns, are projected.