A Design Space for Quantum Circuit Visualizations
Authors
Hyeok Kim (Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology), Leilani Battle (University of Washington)
Presentation
- Session
- From design spaces to visual design
- Time
- Thursday, Nov 12, 13:12 – 13:24 (US/Eastern) · session 13:00 – 14:30
- Location
- Hall Essex north
Links
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Keywords
Quantum computing, quantum circuit visualization, quantum programming, visualization design space
Abstract
Quantum circuit visualizations play an essential role in supporting sense-making and communication of quantum programs. While several tools exist for rendering quantum circuits, they vary widely in encoding options due to idiosyncrasies among machine and platform providers. We observe an opportunity to coalesce these disparate rendering approaches under a single, unified grammar to enable consistent, cross-platform enhancement of quantum circuit visualizations. However, it is unclear how to design such a grammar to best support the quantum computing community. Towards this end, we contribute a design space of quantum circuit visualizations by analyzing 182 static and 12 interactive cases collected from online tutorials and documentations, research publications, public presentations, and prior systems. Based on our analysis, we discuss how our design space relates to existing visualization principles yet exhibits unique aspects. We conclude with opportunities for future systems regarding data structure, cognition, and integrability.
For Practitioners
Visualization researchers or quantum software engineers who are interested in building circuit visualization tools