Mastodawn

Alexander Lex

@alexlex@vis.social

205 Followers

249 Following

203 Posts

Data visualization researcher. Associate Prof at the SCI Institute and School of Computing University of Utah. Running the Visualization Design Lab: http://vdl.sci.utah.edu. Co-founder of datavisyn.

Personal Website	http://alexander-lex.net
Lab Website	https://vdl.sci.utah.edu/
Company Website	https://www.datavisyn.io/

Alexander Lex May 10

Alexander Lex Apr 30

If you're curios about how reVISit can help you run your user studies, join us for a meetup at #CHI2025 tomorrow from 9:00-10:30 in Room G218!

https://revisit.dev/

Home | ReVISit

reVISit: Reproducible and Powerful Visualization User Studies

Alexander Lex Apr 29

Maxim Lisnic is having a busy day presenting two #chi2025 papers on "guardrails against cherrypicking" and on "composing text in dashboard tools". Max is on the job market for PostDocs and academic positions. Talk to him if you're hiring!

https://vdl.sci.utah.edu/publications/2025_chi_guardrails/
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713580

Visualization Guardrails: Designing Interventions Against Cherry-Picking in Interactive Data Explorers

Data visualization research lab at SCI, SoC, University of Utah

Alexander Lex Apr 23

I’ll be joining the Institute of Human-Centred Computing – https://hcc.tugraz.at/ – and look forward to new collaborations with the fantastic team there.

I’ll also stay closely connected to Utah, continuing my work with the amazing team at the SCI Institute and the Kahlert School of Computing.

HCC - Home

Alexander Lex Apr 23

After an incredible decade at the University of Utah, I’m happy to share that I’ll be returning to my alma mater, TU Graz, this fall as a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction.

I’ll be hiring a PhD student and a PostDoc in Graz—if you're interested in HCI and visualization get in touch!

Alexander Lex Apr 11

We’ll also hold an in-person get-together for course participants and anyone interested in reVISit in Room G218, 9:00–10:30am on Thursday, May 1.

Alexander Lex Apr 11

Course details:
Title: Running Online User Studies with the reVISit Framework
Mounday, Apr 28, 11:10 AM – 5:50 PM (with breaks)
Session links:
https://programs.sigchi.org/chi/2025/program/content/188383
https://programs.sigchi.org/chi/2025/program/content/191128
https://programs.sigchi.org/chi/2025/program/content/191129

Conference Programs

Alexander Lex Apr 11

Going to CHI in Japan? Interested in running user studies?

Sign up for our virtual CHI 2025 course that teaches you how to use reVISit, a new, open-source user study tool reducing the tedium of study design. Come learn through some practical examples.

https://cvent.me/g5mx2w
https://revisit.dev

Alexander Lex Apr 9

It’s the time of the year when students accepted to graduate programs make decisions on where to go, while others might still be anxiously waiting to hear back. Unfortunately, the grad admissions process is opaque, so I’ve written a post that gives background: https://vdl.sci.utah.edu/blog/2025/04/09/grad-school-admission/

Reading Between the Lines: The US Computer Science Graduate Admission Process

Data visualization research lab at SCI, SoC, University of Utah

Alexander Lex Mar 20

Can you run a think-aloud study via crowdsourcing? Yes you can! We used reVISit for running and analyzing online TA studies. And yes, online participants do actually speak, though they’re more critical than lab participants. Check out the CHI paper: https://vdl.sci.utah.edu/publications/2025_chi_crowdaloud/ #datavis #chi2025

Crowdsourced Think-Aloud Studies

Data visualization research lab at SCI, SoC, University of Utah

×

I got a bit locker command panel when I went to that address.

You should not post dangerous links like that!

CaveDave May 10

@will that's awful. Hey ChatGPT, play Despacito

Mx. Feelingz May 10

@will registration starts at home

Georg Ruß May 10

@will This should be https.

Mielikki May 10

@will just registered ✅

@mielikki @will "Back to Vibing"

@will Man, I have such fond memories of that great school, LB!

Good ole loop 'em back....

@will I think you forgot to put in an actual public IP lol

My friend, I do believe you got *whooshed*.

hallunke23 🇺🇦

This should be changed to IPv6:

http://[::1]:8080/register

Thomas Schäfer May 10

@hallunke23 @will

How about using names?

http://localhost:8080/register

@hallunke23 I hate servers defaulting to IPv6-only loopback address. (… because they resolve localhost and get a v6 address.)

hallunke23 🇺🇦

Why? #IPv6 is the regular internet, so it only makes sense to use that for talking to localhost. #IPv4 is just a legacy network which will be around for a few years to remain, but it is no longer the primary Layer 3 protocol.

@hallunke23 When I am setting up on a loopback address, you typically do that for either testing/debugging or internal purposes. It's unpleasant when the server listens on the port on only one of the two protocols. It makes the setup hard. I just don't like guessing (or looking it up) whether the server is on [::1] or 127.0.0.1.

Also, for these purposes, I don't need new fancy features of IPv6. IPv6 is great in real networks, but makes my live harder, when used at the loopback interface.

hallunke23 🇺🇦

There's a solution to that: Use #IPv6 only and abandon #IPv4 entirely. Then you don't get mixed up between the two versions any more.
@jwo

@will
Damn site is down again.

Frost, glow wolf 🐺

@will do..they...

I don't even know if they're joking, or misunderstanding how the internet works and actually serious.

@IceWolf Hint:
Take a look at the display name and user handle of the poster (of the original poster as seen in the image, not the ones of @will). 😁

🤔 Of course, also those could be an instance of #PoesLaw (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law), so we can't know for sure.

Poe's law - Wikipedia

Frost, glow wolf 🐺

@das_g @will Yeah, we've seen people arguing both ways for "HTML is a programming language"! :3

"java_is_javascript" is a bit more clearly a joke, but still. Jokey person doesn't necessarily imply joke post.

(I wouldn't be surprised at all if they're joking, it's just their @ isn't necessarily an Obvious Tell.)

@IceWolf «Jokey person doesn't necessarily imply joke post.» True, and as indicated, Poe's Law makes this strictly undecidable, except by the poster (whose statements about the matter we would not be able to trust, because Poe's Law 😵‍💫). But that kind of rage-bite-y display name and @ handle is not untypical for dedicated satire / parody / (benevolent) trolling accounts, so that'd be my working assumption. 🤷

Alerta! Alerta!May 10

@will 😂

Tobias Hellgren May 10

@will Excuse me, but that homepage only says "It works!" and something about some "Ubuntu" configuration test for something called Apache (helicopter?)

bunnybeam May 10

@will is this real?

Azutsune the stargazer May 10

@will why is it an ip port

Shadow Heart May 10

@will brought to you by hitachi.

silly robotgirl May 10

i will nuke the cishets from existence

@will cc @buttplugio please make VibeCon

Zoidberg For President May 11

@will I almost missed the point of that one... as much as that guy missing the lack of point of posting it in the first place... :p

@will lol it's the account registration endpoint of my game's dev server

Anarchic Teapot ⚧️May 30

@will 😂 😂 🤦 😭