SpaceTree: Supporting Exploration in Large Node Link Tree, Design Evolution and Empirical Evaluation

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SpaceTree Supporting Exploration in Large Node
Link Tree, Design Evolution and Empirical
Evaluation Catherine Plaisant, Jesse Grosjean,
Benjamin B.Bederson in Proceedings of IEEE
Symposium on Information Visualization, 2002 57
-64, Boston, October 2002

• Presented by
• Mei Huang Chunyuan Liao
• 3/10, 2005

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Outline

• Motivation
• Related work
• Highlights of SpaceTree
• Controlled Experiments
• Comments
• Discussions

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Motivation

• Improve classic tree representation (node link
  diagram) by zoomable UI and animation techniques
• Classic representation is the most familiar
  mapping of a tree
• Inefficient space usage makes large tree
  exploration not so convenient
• Zooming animation can improve user experiences

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Related work (1)

• Category 1 Space filling
• Representatives
• Treemaps
• Information slices
• Comments
• Focus on leaf nodes, not the tree topology
• Users need training due to unfamiliarity

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Information Slices
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Related work (2)

• Category 2 Node link
• Techniques
• Layout
• V/H hierarchy, Circular layout (hyperbolic tree),
  3D diagram
• Uneven scaling
• Overview Detail views, Zooming, Pruning, Expand
  Contract
• Selective rendering
• Dynamic Query
• Comments
• Clearer and intuitive view of tree topology
• Challenge in screen space usage

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Highlights Early Design lessons

• Semantic zooming
• Aggressive expanding
• Decomposed tree animation
• Landmark
• Search Filter

Demo
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Hyperbolic Browser

• Lay a whole tree out in a hyperbolic plane and
  map it to a unit disk
• Focus context
• Smooth continuous animation

Circle Limit IV by M.C. Escher
Demo
John Lamping, Ramana Rao, and Peter Pirolli A
FocusContext Technique Based on Hyperbolic
Geometry for Visualizing Large Hierarchies
Processdings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems, Denver, May
1995
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Comparing SpaceTree, Hyperbolic Tree Browser, MS
Explorer, and Treemap
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Comments

• A good application of zoomable UI animation
• Early version review provides very useful
  information
• Controlled experiments were carefully designed
  observation explanations were clear and sound
• Screen space usage could be improved

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Discussions

• Checking available space in both dimensions?
• Alternative summarizers
• Label several previously visited paths may be
  useful
• How to deal with large node bounding box?
• Combining ST with HT?

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Thank you !