On the Usability of Lombardi Graph Drawings

Purchase, Helen C. and Hamer, John and Nöllenburg, Martin and Kobourov, Stephen G. (2013) On the Usability of Lombardi Graph Drawings. In: 20th International Symposium, GD 2012, September 19-21, 2012, Redmond, WA, USA , pp. 451-462 (Official URL: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-36763-2_40).

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

A recent line of work in graph drawing studies Lombardi drawings, i.e., drawings with circular-arc edges and perfect angular resolution at vertices. Little is known about the effects of curved edges versus straight edges in typical graph reading tasks. In this paper we present the first user evaluation that empirically measures the readability of three different layout algorithms (traditional spring embedder and two recent near-Lombardi force-based algorithms) for three different tasks (shortest path, common neighbor, vertex degree). The results indicate that, while users prefer the Lombardi drawings, the performance data do not present such a positive picture.

Item Type:Conference Paper
Additional Information:10.1007/978-3-642-36763-2_40
Classifications:D Aesthetics > D.001 General
P Styles > P.120 Circular
ID Code:1332

Repository Staff Only: item control page

References

Hobbs, R.: Mark Lombardi: Global Networks. Independent Curators (2003)

Duncan, C.A., Eppstein, D., Goodrich, M.T., Kobourov, S.G., Nöllenburg, M.: Lombardi drawings of graphs. J. Graph Alg. and Applications 16(1), 85–108 (2012)

Bar, M., Neta, M.: Humans prefer curved visual objects. Psychological Science 17(8), 645–648 (2006)

Purchase, H.: Which Aesthetic Has the Greatest Effect on Human Understanding? In: DiBattista, G. (ed.) GD 1997. LNCS, vol. 1353, pp. 248–261. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)

Di Battista, G., Vismara, L.: Angles of planar triangular graphs. SIAM J. Discrete Math. 9(3), 349–359 (1996)

Garg, A., Tamassia, R.: Planar Drawings and Angular Resolution: Algorithms and Bounds. In: van Leeuwen, J. (ed.) ESA 1994. LNCS, vol. 855, pp. 12–23. Springer, Heidelberg (1994)

Gutwenger, C., Mutzel, P.: Planar Polyline Drawings with Good Angular Resolution. In: Whitesides, S.H. (ed.) GD 1998. LNCS, vol. 1547, pp. 167–182. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)

Cheng, C., Duncan., C., Goodrich, M., Kobourov, S.: Drawing planar graphs with circular arcs. Discrete Comput. Geom. 25(3), 405–418 (2001)

Finkel, B., Tamassia, R.: Curvilinear Graph Drawing Using the Force-Directed Method. In: Pach, J. (ed.) GD 2004. LNCS, vol. 3383, pp. 448–453. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

Brandes, U., Schlieper, B.: Angle and Distance Constraints on Tree Drawings. In: Kaufmann, M., Wagner, D. (eds.) GD 2006. LNCS, vol. 4372, pp. 54–65. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

Gutwenger, C., Mutzel, P.: Planar Polyline Drawings with Good Angular Resolution. In: Whitesides, S.H. (ed.) GD 1998. LNCS, vol. 1547, pp. 167–182. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)

Brandes, U., Shubina, G., Tamassia, R.: Improving angular resolution in visualizations of geographic networks. In: Proc. 2nd TCVG Symp. Visualization (VisSym 2000), Springer, 23–32 (2000)

Duncan, C., Eppstein, D., Goodrich, M., Kobourov, S., Nöllenburg, M.: Drawing Trees with Perfect Angular Resolution and Polynomial Area. In: Brandes, U., Cornelsen, S. (eds.) GD 2010. LNCS, vol. 6502, pp. 183–194. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)

Duncan, C.A., Eppstein, D., Goodrich, M.T., Kobourov, S.G., Löffler, M.: Planar and poly-arc lombardi drawings. In: Speckmann, B. (ed.) GD 2011. LNCS, vol. 7034, pp. 308–319. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)

Bastian, M., Heymann, S., Jacomy, M.: Gephi: An open source software for exploring and manipulating networks. In: Proc. 3rd Int. Conf. Weblogs and Social Media, pp. 361–362 (2009)

Chernobelskiy, R., Cunningham, K.I., Goodrich, M.T., Kobourov, S.G., Trott, L.: Force-Directed Lombardi-Style Graph Drawing. In: Speckmann, B. (ed.) GD 2011. LNCS, vol. 7034, pp. 320–331. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)

Fruchterman, T., Reingold, E.: Graph drawing by force-directed placement. Software Practice and Experience 21(11), 1129–1164 (1991)

Ware, C.: Info. Visualization: Perception for Design. Morgan Kaufmann (2004)

Xu, K., Rooney, C., Passmore, P., Ham, D.H., Nguyen, P.: A user study on curved edges in graph visualization. In: IEEE InfoVis (2012) (to appear)

Nakarada-Kordic, I., Lobb, B.: Effect of perceived attractiveness of web interface design on visual search of web sites. In: Proc. 6th SIGCHI NZ Conf. Computer-Human Interaction (CHINZ 2005), pp. 25–27. ACM, New York (2005)