Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Brandt, Astrid van den, Choe, Kiroong, L'Yi, Sehi, Lange, Devin, Gehlenborg, Nils
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.00370
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910273553563648
author Brandt, Astrid van den
Choe, Kiroong
L'Yi, Sehi
Lange, Devin
Gehlenborg, Nils
author_facet Brandt, Astrid van den
Choe, Kiroong
L'Yi, Sehi
Lange, Devin
Gehlenborg, Nils
contents Diverse genomics data, scientific questions, and analysis tasks typically demand highly specialized visualizations. Therefore, users often must customize or author new ones tailored to their data. Existing tools are usually either limited in customization or require substantial learning or programming, and even expressive tools assume visualization expertise many users lack. Agentic and large language model (LLM) approaches are increasingly applied to complex scientific tasks, including visualization. Natural-language conversational interfaces offer a promising path to democratizing the authoring of complex visualizations. In the context of genomics, these approaches face additional challenges: genomics visualizations typically integrate heterogeneous data types and are composed of multiple linked interactive views. These challenges motivate more structured LLM-based schemes. We first characterize where vanilla LLM generation succeeds and fails for genomics visualization, identifying eight quality dimensions. We then compare six schemes--direct generation, a fixed pipeline, and four agentic configurations varying in the number of specialist agents and the presence of a reviewer--across 159 cases spanning three levels of query ambiguity and specification complexity. All schemes use the Gosling visualization grammar as structured output. Agentic iteration substantially improves perceived quality over both baselines, while more complex agent architectures yield no additional benefit. We discuss implications for designing agentic systems for domain-specific visualization authoring. All supplemental materials are available at https://osf.io/uqe83.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2606_00370
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Agentic Authoring of Interactive Multiview Visualizations in Genomics
Brandt, Astrid van den
Choe, Kiroong
L'Yi, Sehi
Lange, Devin
Gehlenborg, Nils
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
H.5; I.2
Diverse genomics data, scientific questions, and analysis tasks typically demand highly specialized visualizations. Therefore, users often must customize or author new ones tailored to their data. Existing tools are usually either limited in customization or require substantial learning or programming, and even expressive tools assume visualization expertise many users lack. Agentic and large language model (LLM) approaches are increasingly applied to complex scientific tasks, including visualization. Natural-language conversational interfaces offer a promising path to democratizing the authoring of complex visualizations. In the context of genomics, these approaches face additional challenges: genomics visualizations typically integrate heterogeneous data types and are composed of multiple linked interactive views. These challenges motivate more structured LLM-based schemes. We first characterize where vanilla LLM generation succeeds and fails for genomics visualization, identifying eight quality dimensions. We then compare six schemes--direct generation, a fixed pipeline, and four agentic configurations varying in the number of specialist agents and the presence of a reviewer--across 159 cases spanning three levels of query ambiguity and specification complexity. All schemes use the Gosling visualization grammar as structured output. Agentic iteration substantially improves perceived quality over both baselines, while more complex agent architectures yield no additional benefit. We discuss implications for designing agentic systems for domain-specific visualization authoring. All supplemental materials are available at https://osf.io/uqe83.
title Agentic Authoring of Interactive Multiview Visualizations in Genomics
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
H.5; I.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.00370