Human-centered Algorithm Engineering:
Graph and Map Visualization (Research Project)

Funding Organisation: The Austrian Science Fund, FWF
Project Number: FWF P 31119
Duration: 11/2018 - 04/2022

Project Team

Sujoy Bhore (Postdoc)
Guangping Li (Doctoral Student)
Martin Nöllenburg (Professor, Principal Investigator)

Topic

Human-centered algorithm engineering is an unconventional new paradigm in algorithmics that puts, for the first time, human factors into the focus of algorithm engineering, a methodology that is based on a cycle of design, analysis, implementation, and experimental evaluation of algorithms. Unlike other fields in computer science that investigate the interplay of humans and computers, our focus is on the symbiosis of human expert users and computers on the fundamental level of algorithms. We combine the mathematical accuracy and computational power of formal algorithmics with the creative power of the human mind in order to provide more effective and efficient algorithms for currently insufficiently solved and ill-defined algorithmic problems. Human-centered algorithms aim to produce solutions of better quality with faster overall performance, and higher user satisfaction. The project has two main goals: (i) establishing theoretical foundations, models of computation, and suitable evaluation methods and (ii) showing the practicality and benefits of the new paradigm for several prime examples of human-centered algorithmic problems that lack satisfying traditional algorithmic solutions in graph drawing and computational cartography.