Debugging Defective Visualizations: Empirical Insights Informing a Human-AI Co-Debugging System

Understand

Visualization authoring is an iterative process requiring users to adjust parameters to achieve desired aesthetics.

• Due to its complexity, users often create defective visualizations and struggle to fix them.
• Many seek help on forums (e.g., Stack Overflow), while others turn to AI, yet little is known about the strengths and limitations of these approaches, or how they can be effectively combined.
• We analyze Vega-Lite debugging cases from Stack Overflow, categorizing question types by askers, evaluating human responses, and assessing AI performance.