Human-Centered Data Visualization [Guest editors' introduction]

In the big data era, we are witnessing an unprecedented amount of information emerging from every aspect of society and daily life--from information systems and sensor networks to social networks and much more. The data we encounter appears in many different formats, including text, images, videos, geometric meshes and shapes, and multimedia. Thus, effectively handling and comprehending such data becomes key to gaining value and insight from them. Designing proper visualization and analysis tools is then critical for data interaction. This special issue represents only a small sample of works on data interaction to address data challenges.