The research communities studying visualization and sonification share exceptionally similar goals, essentially aiming to make data interpretable to humans. One community uses visual representations, while the other employs auditory (nonspeech) repre- sentations of data. Although the two communities have much in common, they developed mostly in parallel, with only compara- tively few examples of integrated audiovisual data analysis idioms presented so far. This panel brings together researchers from both the fields of visualization and sonification to collectively discuss the question: ‘Integrating Sonification and Visualization – but why?’ 

In the panel discussion, we will tackle this question along two main hypotheses: Combining the modalities to (1) increase the “bandwidth from data to brain,” or (2) to increase a user’s personal engagement during the data analysis process. On the one hand, designers might aim to communicate more data in less time or gain more and more complex insights from the data by using a multi-modal display. This argument follows an understanding that two senses should be capable of processing more information than “just” one. On the other hand, sometimes, a more engaged analysis of the represented data is desirable. Engagement with data visualization stands as a crucial topic in numerous contexts within our field, encouraging “deeper” thinking by expert analysts, readers of data journalism articles, and students in educational settings. We hypothesize that integrating visualization with sonification holds the potential to enhance user engagement during analysis. Through the panel discussion, we want to delve into the spectrum between aiming for bandwidth and engagement, seeking to understand the opportunities and challenges of integrating sonification and visualization.