NL4DV: Natural Language toolkit for Data Visualization

NL4DV takes a natural language query about a given dataset as input and outputs a structured JSON object containing:

• Data attributes,
• Analytic tasks, and
• Visualizations (Vega-Lite specifications)

With this output, developers can

• Create visualizations in Python using natural language, and/or
• Add a natural language interface to their existing visualization systems.

Setup Instructions, API Documentation, and Examples

These can all be found on NL4DV's project website.

Credits

<div> <p> NL4DV is a collaborative project originally created by the <strong>Georgia Tech Visualization Lab</strong> at Georgia Institute of Technology with subsequent contributions from <strong>Ribarsky Center for Visual Analytics</strong> at UNC Charlotte and the <strong>DataVisards Group</strong> at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. </p> <ul> <li> <strong>Georgia Tech Visualization Lab</strong><br/> <ul> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://narechania.com">Arpit Narechania</a> (currently at HKUST)</li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://arjun010.github.io/">Arjun Srinivasan</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rmitra34/">Rishab Mitra</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://va.gatech.edu/endert/">Alex Endert</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~john.stasko/">John Stasko</a></li> </ul> </li> <li> <strong>Ribarsky Center for Visual Analytics at UNC Charlotte</strong><br/> <ul> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/subhamsah17/">Subham Sah</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://cci.charlotte.edu/directory/wenwen-dou/">Wenwen Dou</a></li> </ul> </li> <li> <strong>DataVisards Group at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology</strong><br/> <ul> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://narechania.com">Arpit Narechania</a> (previously at Georgia Tech)</li> </ul> </li> <li> <strong>Independent Contributor</strong><br/> <ul> <li>Tenghao Ji</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <p> We thank the members of the <a target="_blank" href="https://vis.gatech.edu/">Georgia Tech Visualization Lab</a> for their support and constructive feedback. We also thank <a href="https://github.com/vijaynyaya" target="_blank">@vijaynyaya</a> for the inspiration to support multiple language model providers. </p> </div>

Citations

2021 IEEE TVCG Journal Full Paper (Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE VIS Conference)

@article{narechania2021nl4dv,
  title = {{NL4DV}: A {Toolkit} for Generating {Analytic Specifications} for {Data Visualization} from {Natural Language} Queries},
  shorttitle = {{NL4DV}},
  author = {{Narechania}, Arpit and {Srinivasan}, Arjun and {Stasko}, John},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG)},
  doi = {10.1109/TVCG.2020.3030378},
  year = {2021},
  publisher = {IEEE}
}

2022 IEEE VIS Conference Short Paper Track

@inproceedings{mitra2022conversationalinteraction,
  title = {{Facilitating Conversational Interaction in Natural Language Interfaces for Visualization}},
  author = {{Mitra}, Rishab and {Narechania}, Arpit and {Endert}, Alex and {Stasko}, John},
  booktitle={2022 IEEE Visualization Conference (VIS)},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2207.00189},
  doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2207.00189},
  year = {2022},
  publisher = {IEEE}
}

2024 IEEE VIS NLVIZ workshop Paper

@misc{sah2024nl4dvllm,
    title={Generating Analytic Specifications for Data Visualization from Natural Language Queries using Large Language Models}, 
    author={{Sah}, Subham and {Mitra}, Rishab and {Narechania}, Arpit and {Endert}, Alex and {Stasko}, John and {Dou}, Wenwen},
    year={2024},
    eprint={2408.13391},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    primaryClass={cs.HC},
    url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.13391}, 
    howpublished={Presented at the NLVIZ Workshop, IEEE VIS 2024}
}

2025 Paper (coming soon)

@misc{ji2025nl4dvstylist,
    title={{NL4DV-Stylist: Styling Data Visualizations Using Natural Language and Example Charts}},
    author={{Ji}, Tenghao and {Narechania}, Arpit},
    year={2025},
    url={osf.io/fs4en_v1},
    DOI={10.31219/osf.io/fs4en_v1},
    publisher={OSF Preprints},
    note={Presented as a poster at IEEE VIS 2025 (Poster Track)}
}

License

The software is available under the MIT License.

Contact

If you have any questions, feel free to open an issue or contact Arpit Narechania.