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| Paper: |
A Novel JupyterLab User Experience for Data Visualization |
| Volume: |
538, ADASS XXXII |
| Page: |
73 |
| Authors: |
Peter K. G. Williams; Jonathan Carifio; Henrik Norman; A. David Weigel |
| DOI: |
10.26624/MQAN2130 |
| Abstract: |
In the Jupyter ecosystem, data visualization is usually done with “widgets” created as notebook cell outputs. While this mechanism works well in some
circumstances, it is not well-suited to presenting long-lived, interactive, and visually
rich interfaces. Unlike the traditional Jupyter notebook system, the newer JupyterLab
application provides a sophisticated extension infrastructure that raises new design possibilities. Here we present a novel user experience (UX) for interactive data visualization in JupyterLab that is based on an “app” that runs alongside the user’s notebooks,
rather than widgets that are bound inside them. We have implemented this UX for the
AAS WorldWide Telescope (WWT) visualization tool. JupyterLab’s messaging APIs
allow the app to smoothly exchange data with multiple computational kernels, allowing users to accomplish tasks that are not possible using the widget framework. A
new Jupyter server extension allows the front end to request data from kernels asynchronously over HTTP, enabling interactive exploration of gigapixel-scale imagery in
WWT. While we have developed this UX for WWT, the overall design and the server
extension are portable to other applications and have the potential to unlock a variety of
new user activities that aren’t currently possible in “science platform” interfaces. This
submission also includes material corresponding to tutorial session “Interactive Visualization in the Age of the Science Platform: Huge FITS Images in JupyterLab with AAS
WorldWide Telescope.” |
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