Systems for Data Interfaces Talk

Talk Abstract: Interactive data visualization interfaces (or simply data interfaces) are critical in nearly every stage of data management—including data cleaning, wrangling, modeling, exploration, and communication. However, designing new interfaces remains a complex and iterative process, as it requires expertise to select appropriate charts, interactions, and layouts that align with the underlying analysis tasks. As data grows in size and is typically stored in cloud DBMSes, it becomes increasingly challenging to build a data interface backend that meets the interface designer’s desired latency expectations and resource constraints.

This talk addresses these challenges by introducing PRECISION INTERFACES 2 (PI2), the first system capable of generating fully functional interactive data interfaces from a representative sequence of task queries. To expand accessibility, we extend the system to support natural language inputs, prototyping NL2 INTERFACE to generate interfaces directly from natural language queries. To automate interface backend optimization for large-scale data, this thesis advocates for a new problem—PHYSICAL VISUALIZATION DESIGN (PVD)—which decouples interface designers from system architecture, enabling design independence. Additionally, this thesis introduces JADE, the first prototype PVD tool that automatically generates middleware architectures to meet latency guarantees and resource constraints.