Unlocking Connected Data: How Can Visual Analytics Help?

Information visualisation presents several opportunities for decision-makers and communities to make better-informed decisions, driven by data insights. However, many of these opportunities are missed due to a communication gap between visualisation designers and data analysts on one end, decision-makers on another, and communities whose data are represented in the visualisation on a third. This gap is exacerbated by uncertainties about how data get routinely collected, stored and analysed to inform real-world decision-making. In this talk, we will discuss some of the opportunities for visual analytics research to bridge this communication gap and we will highlight key challenges that hinder the usability of digital footprints to inform decisions in health and education.

About the speaker:

Mai is a Lecturer in Visualisation at City, University of London. She holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech. Before her current appointment, she worked at the Universities of Leeds and Bradford and was a NSF-funded postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Mai is the Co-Director of the Digital Makers Programme, a cross-sector initiative to support the digital transformation of the City of Bradford, UK. She is also the Deputy Director of the Workforce Observatory for West Yorkshire and Harrogate Integrated Care System. Her primary research interests include Human-Computer Interaction and Visual Analytics, particularly the human-centered design and evaluation of visualisation for healthcare data analytics. She is a member of the advisory board for the Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research and a cross-theme visualisation expert at the Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Research Centre.