Sarah Schöttler
Hi, I'm Sarah! (she/her)
I'm a PhD candidate supervised by Benjamin Bach and Uta Hinrichs in the Visual+Interactive Data group at the University of Edinburgh, researching responsive geographic visualization—how to make maps, cartograms and other geographic visualizations work across devices and screen sizes. Prior to this, I completed an MSc in Design Informatics (2019) at the University of Edinburgh, and a BSc in Technology and Liberal Arts & Sciences (2017) at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. I design and develop interactive maps and visualizations for my research and occasionally for clients. I also teach workshops and short courses on programming, visualization, and other digital skills as a CDCS Training Fellow.
News
- I will be a student volunteer and present my paper at VIS in Florida this October, see you there 🌴
- July '24: I have a paper accepted at VIS 24! Practices and Strategies in Responsive Thematic Map Design: A Report from Design Workshops with Experts
- June '24: I have a new paper out in TVCG: Constraint-Based Breakpoints for Responsive Visualization Design and Development
- Nov '23: We hosted the Information+ conference in Edinburgh — I helped organize as one of the social co-chairs.
- Sept '23: I started as CDCS Training Fellow; this semester I am running several workshops/short courses: Introduction to Python, Introduction to git and GitHub, Creating your personal website with GitHub Pages, and LaTeX and Overleaf.
- Aug '23: I attended the INTERACT Doctoral Consortium.
- May '23: I attended Outlier in Porto.
- May '23: Jinrui Wang and I won the CDCS Digital Research Prize for Best Data Visualisation for our work for PeaceRep! 🏆
- Mar '23: I passed my 2nd year review.
- Mar '23: Our paper "NetworkNarratives: Data Tours for Visual Network Exploration and Analysis" (open pdf on arXiv) is accepted to CHI!
- Feb '23: I wrapped up work on an interactive Ukraine conflict map for PeaceRep.
- May '22: I passed my first year review, making me a PhD candidate!
- Nov '21': I published a GitHub template for the filterable collection website I developed for the geographic network visualization survey.
- Aug '21: I finally moved to Edinburgh after working remotely for the first months of my PhD due to the pandemic.
- Apr '21: I (re)joined the DVS Board as Knowledge Director for the remainder of the 2021-22 term.
- May '21: I (virtually) attended and presented my STAR on geographic network visualization at Eurovis.
- Feb '21: My survey of geographic network visualization techniques is now published in CGF (open access)!
- Jan 2021: Started my PhD at the University of Edinburgh.
Older news
Publications
Jonas Oesch, Sarah Schöttler, Joana Kelén, and Arzu Çöltekin. Thematic world maps in the news: How effective are they on smartphones? Forthcoming in The Cartographic Journal (2025).
Sarah Schöttler, Uta Hinrichs, and Benjamin Bach. Practices and Strategies in Responsive Thematic Map Design: A Report from Design Workshops with Experts. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2025). Companion Website | Conference Talk (VIS 2024)
Sarah Schöttler, Jason Dykes, Jo Wood, Uta Hinrichs, and Benjamin Bach. Constraint-Based Breakpoints for Responsive Visualization Design and Development. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2025). Demo Website
Wenchao Li, Sarah Schöttler, James Scott-Brown, Yun Wang, Siming Chen, Huamin Qu, and Benjamin Bach. NetworkNarratives: Data Tours for Visual Network Exploration and Analysis. Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23). Demo Website
Sarah Schöttler, Yalong Yang, Hanspeter Pfister, and Benjamin Bach. Visualizing and Interacting with Geospatial Networks: A Survey and Design Space. Computer Graphics Forum, 40: 5-33 (2021). Project website | Conference Talk (EuroVis 2021)
Arran Ridley, Sarah Schöttler, Aba-Sah Dadzie, and Benjamin Bach. The VisTools Marketplace: An Activity to Understand the Landscape of Visualisation Tools. Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE VIS Workshop on Data Vis Activities to Facilitate Learning, Reflecting, Discussing, and Designing (2020).
Sarah Schöttler, Tobias Kauer, and Benjamin Bach. Geographic Network Visualization Techniques: A Work-In-Progress Taxonomy. Poster at Graph Drawing (2019). Project website
Projects
An overview of my map and visualization design and development work.
Responsive Thematic Mapping Cheat Sheet
July 2023–July 2024Based on interviews and design workshops with visualization and thematic mapping practitioners, I developed a cheat sheet showing common challenges in responsive thematic mapping, and possible design strategies for addressing them.
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Constraint-Based Breakpoints Demo & Toolkit
July 2021–July 2024We developed the concept of constraint-based breakpoints, a new technique that makes responsive visualizations more reliable, flexible, and resilient to changes in the underlying data. Our demo website shows interactively resizable example visualizations, created with our toolkit, which includes a prototype library, the view landscape diagram, and suggested workflows for visualization developers.
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Visualizing Real-Time Opinion Data
August–November 2020I developed a sequence of mobile-focused prototype visualizations for Say As You Go, a startup aiming to show people's perceptions and opinions in real-time.
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Visualizing Air Quality
October 2019–February 2020In a student group project, we collected air quality data in Münster, Germany. We then created a website discussing uncertainty in this data, as well as an AR application visualizing different levels of air quality in your environment. I designed and implemented the scrollytelling website, and developed two out of the three maps shown on the page.
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PaxVis: Visualizing Peace Agreements
February–May 2019I created an interactive interface for the PA-X database, which contains data on over 1500 peace agreements.
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Inequality in NHS Health and Care Experience
November–December 2018In a group project for my MSc in Design Informatics, we created a visualization of inequalities in Scottish healthcare experiences, based on survey data published by the Scottish government.
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Dot Map Generalization (BSc Project)
April–June 2017For my Bachelor project, I developed an algorithm to generalize dot maps with the goal of making web-based marker maps more readable.
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ATLAS Semester Abroad Database
February–July 2017A D3-based web application for viewing the ATLAS Semester Abroad Database, a collection of students' experiences at universities abroad. (Not publicly accessible)
Solar System Simulation
July 2016A simulation of the Earth's orbit around the sun, based on (extremely simplified) physics. Tinker with the variables and the Earth will fly into the sun (or outer space...)
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