Hullman started her career as faculty at the University of Washington Information School, where she was also adjunct assistant professor in Computer Science, and affiliated with the Interactive Data Lab and DUB (Design Use Build) group.
Work
Jessica Hullman has published peer-reviewed journal articles on topics including uncertainty visualization, Bayesian cognition, human-AI interaction, decision-making under uncertainty, and evaluation of visualizations. Her work has contributed new visualization types to help readers develop an intuitive sense of uncertainty, such as hypothetical outcome plots. Notable works include
Visual Reasoning Strategies for Effect Size Judgments and Decisions[2]
In Pursuit of Error: A Survey of Uncertainty Visualization Evaluation[3]
Visualization rhetoric: Framing effects in narrative visualization[4]
Hypothetical Outcome Plots Outperform Error Bars and Violin Plots for Inferences about Reliability of Variable Ordering[6]
Hullman has given many invited lectures and keynote presentations, including "Strategic Communication of Uncertainty" to the President's Council of Advisors on Science & Technology, "How to Visually Communicate Uncertain Data" to the Conference on Global Risk, Uncertainty, & Volatility, "Beyond Visualization: Theories of Inference to Improve Data Analysis & Communication" [7] and "The Visual Uncertainty Experience" at OpenVisConf.[8] Hullman is co-director of the Midwest Uncertainty (MU) Collective at Northwestern University.
In addition to her scholarly work, Hullman has written articles for the popular press related to visualizing uncertainty, including for Wired ("Is Your Chart a Detective Story? Or a Police Report?", with Andrew Gelman),[9]Scientific American, The Hill and National Review ("We Need Better Risk Communication to Combat the Coronavirus", with Allison Schrager).[10] She is a contributor to Andrew Gelman's blog, Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
Awards
Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship - Microsoft, 2019[11]
Best Paper Award - IEEE VIS 2023, ACM CHI 2023, ACM VIS 2020, ACM CHI 2017[12]
Best Paper Award Honorable Mention - ACM CHI 2024, ACM CHI 2023, IEEE VIS 2021, ACM CHI 2020, ACM CHI 2018, IEEE VIS 2017, ACM CHI 2017, IEEE VIS 2011[12]