Notable: On-the-fly Assistant for Data Storytelling in Computational Notebooks

Abstract

Computational notebooks are widely used for data analysis. Their interleaved displays of code and execution results (e.g., visualizations) are welcomed since they enable iterative analysis and preserve the exploration process. However, the communication of data findings remains challenging in computational notebooks. Users have to carefully identify useful findings from useless ones, document them with texts and visual embellishments, and then organize them in different tools. Such workflow greatly increases their workload, according to our interviews with practitioners. To address the challenge, we designed Notable to offer on-the-fly assistance for

Understanding Nonlinear Collaboration between Human and AI Agents: A Co-design Framework for Creative Design

“…Desired roles of AI in human-AI collaboration have been widely discussed from different perspectives (e.g. categories of humancomputer interaction for creativity [36], tasks in ideation [38], computational creativity [44], work division in data storytelling [32,33]). While Lubart et al [36] stressed the diversity of users for AI roles, the characteristics of target users are under-discovered.…”

OutlineSpark: Igniting AI-powered Presentation Slides Creation from Computational Notebooks through Outlines

“…Although straightforward, this method requires a manual configuration process. In contrast, Notable [31] seeks to automate this process to some extent by offering an on-the-fly plugin. It auto-generates the chart findings and embellishments to help data analysts create slides during the analysis phase.…”

“…It restricts the ability to generate bullet points for chart and table findings that are stored as variables in the kernel, which is considered a point for future improvement by user study participants (P2 and P8). Following the work on insight generation for charts and tables [13,31,34,58], OutlineSpark can be enhanced to generate such bullet points. Moreover, participants held different opinions regarding the function of recommending potential topics in the outline panel.…”

anywidget: reusable widgets for interactive analysis and visualization in computational notebooks

“…Interactive notebook visualization tools vary widely in features and compatibility (Wang et al, 2024). Some tools offer rich features (e.g., bi-directional communication) but rely on platformspecific APIs, limiting compatibility (Drosos et al, 2020;Jain et al, 2022;Li et al, 2023;Wang et al, 2023;Zhao et al, 2022). More simple approaches provide broader compatibility but lack features which meaningfully enrich user workflows.…”