I am a UI engineer based in Seattle, WA. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, advised by Matthew Kay at Northwestern University.
I take a human-centered approach to help data workers evaluate and communicate uncertainty and statistics with visualizations. My thesis was about integrating visualization grammars with data analysts’ task language. Through my internships at two national labs, I have applied my research interests to challenges I care about — climate change and renewable energy. I am also interested in adopting and improving open science practices.
Across my projects, I have used a wide range of methods, such as design, system-building, participant experiments & (Bayesian) statistical analyses, and qualitative interviews.
Midwest Uncertainty Collective • umich email: xpu • Curriculum Vitae/CV • X/Twitter • GitHub • LinkedIn. • IPA pronunciation: /ɕǎu jə̄ŋ pʰʷúː/
Publications
Odds and Insights: Decision Quality in Exploratory Data Analysis Under Uncertainty. Abhraneel Sarma, Xiaoying Pu, Yuan Cui, Michael Correll, Eli T. Brown, and Matthew Kay. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2024), pp. 1-14. 2024. (🏅 Best Paper Honorable Mention)
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How data analysts use a visualization grammar in practice. Xiaoying Pu, and Matthew Kay. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-14.(CHI 2023)
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Datamations: Animated Explanations of Data Analysis Pipelines. Xiaoying Pu, Sean Kross, Jake Hofman, Daniel Goldstein. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-14.(CHI 2021)
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SPy: Car Steering Reveals Your Trip Route!. Mert D. Pesé, Xiaoying Pu, and Kang G. Shin. In Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2020.2 (2020): 155-174.
Shorter ones
Xiaoying Pu, Matthew Kay, Steven M. Drucker, Jeffrey Heer, Dominik Moritz, and Arvind Satyanarayan. 2021. Special Interest Group on Visualization Grammars. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI ’21 Extended Abstracts), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA 3 Pages.
[PDF]Unbiasing Visual Data Exploration in the Garden of Forking Paths. Xiaoying Pu, Matthew Kay, Michael Correll, Eli Brown. CHI 2019 Workshop on Human-Centered Study of Data Science Work Practices, 2019.
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