From Hierarchies to Polyarchies: Visualizing Multiple Relationships

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From Hierarchies to PolyarchiesVisualizing
Multiple Relationships

• George G. Robertson
• Microsoft Research

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What is the problem?

• Hierarchies are very common
• 20 years of hierarchy visualization RD
• Significant problems remain
• New problems appearing (Multiple Hierarchies)

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Current Approaches

• Many 2D and 3D hierarchy visualizations
• Each works for some tasks and some scales
• Very few have had user testing
• Windows Tree Control
• Many observed problems

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Whats wrong with this picture?
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Problems Fitting Data

• Extreme aspect ratio (broad and shallow)
• May be multiple hierarchies
• Scaling issues

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Problems Cognitive Overhead

• Loss of context
• Or loss of detail
• Separate detail/overview ? extra overhead
• Multiple focus is difficult
• Which item is open?

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Basic View Strategies

• Two view (separate detail/overview views)
• Distorted view
• Distorted data fisheye
• Distorted space 3D, hyperbolic
• Focus in Context (integrated view)

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Basic Visualization Approaches

• Clustering
• Galaxy of News
• ThemeScape
• Hot Sauce
• Geographic
• Floor plans
• Street maps

• Node-link diagrams
• 2D diagrams
• SemNet
• Cone Tree
• Fisheye Cone Tree
• Hyperbolic viewer
• FSN
• XML3D

• Indentation
• Tree control
• Fisheye
• Containment
• Treemaps
• Pad

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Smalltalk File Browser - 1979

• Xerox PARC 1979

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Fisheye Views 1986

• Furnas, Bell Labs report 1981, CHI86

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SemNet - 1986

• Fairchild, Poltrock, Furnas, MCC
• Semantic network 3D visualization

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Cone Tree - 1991

• Robertson, Mackinlay Card, Xerox PARC, CHI91
• Limits
• 10 levels
• 1000 nodes
• Up to 10,000

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Cone Tree 10,000 nodes

• Performance problems and Visual clutter

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Fisheye Cone Tree

• Adding Fisheye solves problems

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TreeMap - 1991

• Johnson Shneiderman, U. Maryland, Vis91
• Space filling
• 3000 objects
• MicroLogics DiskMapper

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FSN - 1992

• Tesler, SGI, 1992
• 2D layout on 3D surface
• Loss of context when examining detail
• Hyper-G (Graz Andrews InfoVis95)

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Graphical Fisheye - 1992

• Sarkar Brown, DEC SRC, CHI92

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Rubber Sheet - 1993

• Sarkar Snibbe, Brown, UIST93

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Spiral Visualization - 1994

• Mackinlay, Robertson, DeLine, Xerox PARC,
  UIST94
• Large DAGs
• Only shows current path

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Hyperbolic Browser - 1994

• Lamping Rao, Xerox PARC, UIST94
• Projected onto circle
• 1000s of nodes

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Continuous Zoom - 1995

• Bartram et al, Simon Fraser, UIST95)

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Fsviz - 1995

• Carriere and Kazman, Waterloo, InfoVis95
• Up to 5000 nodes with no occlusion

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Butterfly - 1995

• Mackinlay, Xerox PARC, CHI95

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Index View - 1995

• T. Masui, Sharp, UIST95
• Vertical picks focus
• Horizontal controls zoom

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H3 - 1997

• Munzner, Stanford Univ., InfoVis97
• Projected onto sphere
• 20,000 nodes

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Reconfigurable Disk Tree - 1998

• Jeong and Pang, UC Santa Cruz, InfoVis98
• Number of identifiable nodes3000 4000

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Disk Tree - 1998

• Chi et al, Xerox PARC, CHI98
• Compact 2D representation

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Sunburst - 2000

• Stasko Zhang, Georgia Tech, InfoVis 2000
• Radial space-filling
• Techniques for viewing more detail

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Visualization Taxonomy - 1994

• Noik (Graphics Interface94)
• Implicit (use of perspective)
• Continuous focus and context
• Filtered (removing items of low interest)
• Discrete focus and context
• Distorted (size, shape, position of elements)
• Adorned (color, texture)

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Unresolved Problems

• Multiple focus

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Folding Paper - proposal
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Multiple Focus in 3D - proposal
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InfoBowl - proposal
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Unresolved Problems

• Multiple focus
• Multiple hierarchies

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Multiple Hierarchies

• One hierarchy changing over time
• Time Tube
• Taxonomy visualization
• MultiTrees (shared subtrees)
• XML3D
• Polyarchy (multiple intersecting hierarchies)

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Time Tube - 1998

• Chi et al., Xerox PARC, CHI98

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Taxonomy Visualization - 2000

• Graham et al., Napier Univ. IJHCS 2000

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MultiTrees - 1994

• Furnas Zacks, Bell Core, CHI94
• DAGs with shared subtrees

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XML3D - 2000

• Munzner, Stanford, IJHCS 2000

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Polyarchy Visualization Problem People and
Resources Example

• Multiple Hierarchies Exist
• Direct reporting
• Cost or Profit Center
• Location
• Implicit relationships

But only one hierarchy is shown
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Show Other Hierarchies
Find Daniel Robbins

• Naming hierarchy is default
• Allow maintainer to define hierarchies
• Show search results in current view
• Morph between views

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Visualization Opportunities

• Perceptual cues to provide pattern information
• User can search or browse
• Show hierarchies an object participates in
• Show relationships between hierarchies
• Show relationships between objects

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One Selection, One Hierarchy
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Visual Pivot Other Hierarchies
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Relationships Between People
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Relationships Between Multiple People
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Unresolved Problems

• Multiple focus
• Multiple hierarchies
• Evaluate hierarchy visualizations

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Polyarchy VisualizationUser Studies

• Study 1 Mockup of visual pivot
• Issues list guided development of prototype
• Study 2 Prototype 2D vs 3D
• Visual Pivot animation was misleading
• Animation Speeds were too slow

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Polyarchy VisualizationUser Studies

• Study 3 Animation Styles and Speeds
• Six animation styles Picked two best
• Twice as fast as study 2 Still too slow
• Study 4 Prototype 2D vs 3D
• Identified most effective animation style
• Identified best speed range

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Two Styles of Visual Pivot

• Sliding
• Rotating

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Visual Pivot StylesSliding versus Rotating
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Visual Pivot Styles Learning Effects
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Visual Pivot Speed
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Unresolved Problems

• Multiple focus
• Multiple hierarchies
• Evaluate hierarchy visualizations
• Get the solutions out to real users!

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Summary

• Use perception to reduce cognitive overhead
• Need continued research to solve problems
• Help user focus on multiple items of interest
  without losing context
• Multiple hierarchies and other relationships
• Handle larger scale
• Evaluate ? Iterate ? get results out