Best paper and honorable mention awards are selected by a dedicated committee of experienced community members. The awards recognize outstanding work from the pool of accepted papers. Best paper committees use a variety of criteria to select the best paper including potential impact to the community, the importance of any results obtained, and technical challenges overcome.
Full Papers
The Best Papers Committee for VIS 2025 Full papers consisted of the following distinguished members: Lars Linsen, Roxana Bujack, Soumya Dutta, David Ebert, BC Kwon, Luis Gustavo Nonato, and Xiting Wang. The Papers Chairs would like to thank the Best Papers Committee for their work and to congratulate the awardees!
Best Papers
“They Aren’t Built For Me”: An Exploratory Study of Strategies for Measurement of Graphical Primitives in Tactile Graphics
by Areen Khalaila, Lane Harrison, Nam Wook Kim, & Dylan Cashman
Session: Best Full Papers [Tuesday (Nov 4), 2:00pm - 3:15pm (CET)]
Developing effective tactile graphics for visually impaired people is an important yet under-explored area. This paper presents a study that investigates basic graphical perception experiments with visually impaired participants. It highlights the gaps between the guidelines for visual primitives and the needs of visually impaired people. It presents the core difficulties of visually impaired people based on an in-depth study, including thought-provoking discussions. Moreover, this work provides design guidelines that serve as solid foundations for this important and emergent area and identifies challenges that open up research opportunities.
ReVISit 2: A Full Experiment Life Cycle User Study Framework
by Zach Cutler, Jack Wilburn, Hilson Shrestha, Yiren Ding, Brian Bollen, Khandaker Abrar Nadib, Tingying He, Andrew McNutt, Lane Harrison, & Alexander Lex
Session: Best Full Papers [Tuesday (Nov 4), 2:00pm - 3:15pm (CET)]
This paper presents the latest incarnation of the reVisit tool, a tool for making user studies more approachable and scientifically sound. It includes many components valuable to the community that can be expected to be widely used, essentially providing a service to the visualization community. It may lead to user studies that are easier to access, more streamlined, and better reproducible. The authors provide an elegant framework, a nice implementation, and comprehensive documentation, as well as a website and open-source repositories with interactive demos. This research will give visualization user studies more visibility by reducing the burden of open-source study design, materials, and results.
Beyond Problem Solving: Framing and Problem–Solution Co-Evolution in Data Visualization Design
by Paul Parsons & Prakash Chandra Shukla
Session: Best Full Papers [Tuesday (Nov 4), 2:00pm - 3:15pm (CET)]
This paper presents a theoretical framing and qualitative study on how visualization design professionals co-evolve visualization problems and solutions. It identifies a critical gap in current design models: the need for problem framing and solution development to co-evolve, rather than being treated as separate stages. The authors compellingly validate this intuition through well-designed studies, providing empirical evidence, actionable strategies, and valuable implications for visualization theory, enriching both research and practice.
Causality-based Visual Analytics of Sentiment Contagion in Social Media Topics
by Renzhong Li, Yuchen Lin, Shuainan Ye, Buwei Zhou, Zhining Kang, Tai-Quan Peng, Wenhao Fu, Yingcai Wu, & Tan Tang
Session: Best Full Papers & Test of Time Awards [Tuesday (Nov 4), 3:45pm - 5:00pm (CET)]
This paper makes a timely and technically rigorous contribution to visual analytics by introducing a novel, causality-based approach to modeling sentiment contagion across social media topics. It combines scalable causal inference with an innovative, map-inspired visualization that encodes time, hierarchy, and sentiment flow, enabling intuitive exploration of complex social dynamics. With its methodological depth, thoughtful design, and real-world applicability, the paper makes valuable contributions to both the methodological and application sides. The comprehensive validation, including use cases, comparative user studies, and expert interviews, demonstrates the system’s usability and its real-world relevance.
NLI4VolVis: Natural Language Interaction for Volume Visualization via LLM Multi-Agents and Editable 3D Gaussian Splatting
by Kuangshi Ai, Kaiyuan Tang, & Chaoli Wang
Session: Best Full Papers & Test of Time Awards [Tuesday (Nov 4), 3:45pm - 5:00pm (CET)]
This paper presents a novel and well-engineered system that integrates up-to-date volume segmentation, learnable 3D Gaussian splatting, open-vocabulary 3D scene understanding, and LLM-based agents to allow users to explore, query, and edit volumetric scenes using natural language. The proposed framework offers a promising step forward in enabling intuitive interaction with real-time 3D volume visualizations through natural language interfaces, making volume rendering accessible even to non-expert users. Its practical impact is documented through a well-designed user study. Moreover, the authors open-source their system, which can benefit the community.
Best Papers Honorable Mentions
ConceptViz: A Visual Analytics Approach for Exploring Concepts in Large Language Models
by Haoxuan Li, Zhen Wen, Qiqi Jiang, Chenxiao Li, Yuwei Wu, Yuchen Yang, Yiyao Wang, Xiuqi Huang, Minfeng Zhu, & Wei Chen
Session: VA for AI [Wednesday (Nov 5), 9:30am - 10:45am (CET)]
Qualitative Study for LLM-assisted Design Study Process: Strategies, Challenges, and Roles
by Shaolun Ruan, Rui Sheng, Xiaolin Wen, Jiachen Wang, Tianyi Zhang, Yong Wang, Tim Dwyer, & Jiannan Li
Session: The VIS in GenAI [Wednesday (Nov 5), 2:00pm - 3:15pm (CET)]
CD-TVD: Contrastive Diffusion for 3D Super-Resolution with Scarce High-Resolution Time-Varying Data
by Chongke Bi, Xin Gao, Jiakang Deng, Guan Li, & Jun Han
Session: Flow and Topology [Wednesday (Nov 5), 3:45pm - 5:00pm (CET)]
Exploring 3D Unsteady Flow using 6D Observer Space Interactions
by Xingdi Zhang, Amani Ageeli, Thomas Theußl, Markus Hadwiger, & Peter Rautek
Session: Flow and Topology [Wednesday (Nov 5), 3:45pm - 5:00pm (CET)]
Affective color scales for colormap data visualizations
by Halle Braun, Kushin Mukherjee, Seth Gorelik, & Karen Schloss
Session: The Color and the Shape [Thursday (Nov 6), 9:30am - 10:45am (CET)]
Story Ribbons: Reimagining Storyline Visualizations with Large Language Models
by Catherine Yeh, Tara Menon, Robin Singh Arya, Helen He, Moira Weigel, Fernanda Viegas, & Martin Wattenberg
Session: From Data to Meaning [Thursday (Nov 6), 11:15am - 12:30pm (CET)]
F^2Stories: A Modular Framework for Multi-Objective Optimization of Storylines with a Focus on Fairness
by Tommaso Piselli, Giuseppe Liotta, Fabrizio Montecchiani, Martin Nöllenburg, & Sara Di Bartolomeo
Session: From Data to Meaning [Thursday (Nov 6), 11:15am - 12:30pm (CET)]
BondMatcher: H-Bond Stability Analysis in Molecular Systems
by Thomas Daniel, Malgorzata Olejniczak, & Julien Tierny
Session: Algorithms and Workflows [Thursday (Nov 6), 2:00pm - 3:15pm (CET)]
Characterizing Visualization Perception with Psychological Phenomena: Uncovering the Role of Subitizing in Data Visualization
by Arran Zeyu Wang, Ghulam Jilani Quadri, Mengyuan Zhu, Chin Tseng, & Danielle Szafir
Session: Perception [Thursday (Nov 6), 2:00pm - 3:15pm (CET)]
Here’s what you need to know about my data: Exploring Expert Knowledge’s Role in Data Analysis
by Haihan Lin, Maxim Lisnic, Derya Akbaba, Miriah Meyer, & Alexander Lex
Session: Analytics & Reasoning [Thursday (Nov 6), 3:45pm - 5:00pm (CET)]
Visualization Badges: Communicating Design and Provenance through Graphical Labels Alongside Visualizations
by Valentin Edelsbrunner, Jinrui Wang, Alexis Pister, Tomas Vancisin, Sian Phillips, Min Chen, & Benjamin Bach
Session: Interaction, Provenance, and Collaboration [Thursday (Nov 6), 3:45pm - 5:00pm (CET)]
Quantifying Visualization Vibes: Measuring Socio-Indexicality at Scale
by Amy Fox, Michelle Morgenstern, Graham Jones, & Arvind Satyanarayan
Session: Trust No One [Friday (Nov 7), 9:30am - 10:45am (CET)]
Short Papers
The Best Short Papers Committee for VIS 2025 Short Papers consisted of the following distinguished members: Yang Shi, Danielle Szafir, Eytan Adar, Jürgen Bernard, Ingrid Hotz. The Short Papers Chairs would like to thank the Best Short Papers Committee for their work and to congratulate the awardees!
Best Papers
Toward a Logic of Generalization about Visualization as a Decision Aid
by Alex Kale
Session: VGTC Awards & Best Short Papers [Tuesday (Nov 4), 11:15am - 12:30pm (CET)]
This interesting and thought-provoking paper brings forward formalisms from decision theory in ways that are accessible and actionable for visualization researchers. It clearly articulates how the visualization community approaches generalization and the logic that underlies it. The paper stands to significantly improve the ways in which we explore and evaluate how visualizations influence decision-making by holistically framing decision-making and its related components. Further, it provides a strong example of how research can introduce established theory to the research community.
The Perils of Chart Deception: How Misleading Visualizations Affect Vision-Language Models
by Ridwan Mahbub, Mohammed Saidul Islam, Md Tahmid Rahman Laskar, Mizanur Rahman, Mir Tafseer Nayeem, and Enamul Hoque
Session: VGTC Awards & Best Short Papers [Tuesday (Nov 4), 11:15am - 12:30pm (CET)]
The paper demonstrates that many of the same deceptive features of charts that can fool a human will also fool Vision-Language Models (VLMs). Through a novel large-scale study (100 charts, 8 deception types, 10 VLMs, and 16k responses), the work characterizes the susceptibility of models to different forms of deception. The results provide an important baseline assessment of the inability of state-of-the-art VLMs in detecting many deceptive chart features (e.g., inverted axes). As critically, the work provides a dataset for the evaluation of future VLMs.
Best Paper Honorable Mentions
Out of the Loop: Enhancing Documentation and Transparency in Causal Loop Diagrams to Capture Multiple Perspectives
by Jessica Bou Nassar, Yu Xuan Yio, Nethara Athukorala, Simran, Songhai Fan, Cynthia A. Huang, Lyn Bartram, Tim Dwyer, & Sarah Goodwin
Session: Charts, Diagrams & Plots [Wednesday (Nov 5), 11:15am - 12:30pm (CET)]
Chronotome: Real-Time Topic Modeling for Streaming Embedding Spaces
by Matte Lim, Catherine Yeh, Martin Wattenberg, Fernanda Viegas, & Panagiotis Michalatos
Session: Explorations in Abstract and Physical Spaces [Wednesday (Nov 5), 2:00pm - 3:15pm (CET)]
Publish-Time Optimizations for Web-Based Visualizations
by Ron Pechuk & Jeffrey Heer
Session: Workflows & Infrastructure [Thursday (Nov 6), 9:30am - 10:45am (CET)]
Towards Understanding Decision Problems as a Goal of Visualization Design
by Lena Cibulski & Stefan Bruckner
Session: Visualization in-the-wild [Thursday (Nov 6), 9:30am - 10:45am (CET)]
Posters
The Best Poster Committee for VIS 2025 posters consisted of the following distinguished members: Davide Ceneda, Fumeng Yang, and Carolina Nobre. The Poster Chairs would like to thank the Best Poster Committee for their work and to congratulate the awardees!
Best Poster
Artistic Inspiration for Uncertainty Visualization Techniques
by Michelle A. Borkin
This work presents 56 hand-drawn and painted reproductions of existing uncertainty visualizations, accompanied by reflection and analysis. The collection shows the role of aesthetics, visual perception principles, and artistic techniques, such as fuzziness and transparency in painting uncertainty visualization, while also pointing to avenues for new encoding techniques. It brings a refreshing and inspirational artistic perspective to uncertainty visualization, one that could be extended to other visualization contexts. The idea is a natural fit for a poster, making it both unique and highly suitable for this award. Its clear structure, simplicity, and visual richness render it especially effective in sparking discussion.
Best Poster Honorable Mention
Designing a Glyph-Based Hierarchical Visualization for Orders of Magnitude Values
by Katerina Batziakoudi, Ambre Assor, Christophe Bortolaso, & Jean-Daniel Fekete
This poster introduces a novel hierarchical visualization approach designed for showing orders of magnitude. The authors propose a new visual representation based on the mantissa–exponent concept. The result is a compelling and thoughtful contribution that clarifies the shortcomings of prior approaches and offers a practical and scalable solution. The poster design is clear and well-organized, effectively showcasing the visualization design.