From Hierarchies to Polyarchies: Visualizing Multiple Relationships

1. From Hierarchies to Polyarchies:Visualizing Multiple Relationships George G. Robertson Microsoft Research

2. What is the problem? • Hierarchies are very common • 20 years of hierarchy visualization R&D • Significant problems remain • New problems appearing (Multiple Hierarchies)

3. 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

4. What’s wrong with this picture?

5. Problems: Fitting Data • Extreme aspect ratio (broad and shallow) • May be multiple hierarchies • Scaling issues

6. Problems: Cognitive Overhead • Loss of context • Or loss of detail • Separate detail/overview  extra overhead • Multiple focus is difficult • Which item is open?

7. Basic View Strategies • Two view (separate detail/overview views) • Distorted view • Distorted data: fisheye • Distorted space: 3D, hyperbolic • Focus in Context (integrated view)

8. 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++

9. Smalltalk File Browser - 1979 • Xerox PARC 1979

10. Fisheye Views – 1986 • Furnas, Bell Labs report 1981, CHI’86

11. SemNet - 1986 • Fairchild, Poltrock, & Furnas, MCC • Semantic network 3D visualization

12. Cone Tree - 1991 • Robertson, Mackinlay & Card, Xerox PARC, CHI’91 • Limits: • 10 levels • 1000 nodes • Up to 10,000

13. Cone Tree – 10,000 nodes • Performance problems and Visual clutter

14. Fisheye Cone Tree • Adding Fisheye solves problems

15. TreeMap - 1991 • Johnson & Shneiderman, U. Maryland, Vis’91 • Space filling • ~3000 objects • MicroLogic’s DiskMapper

16. FSN - 1992 • Tesler, SGI, 1992 • 2D layout on 3D surface • Loss of context when examining detail • Hyper-G (Graz; Andrews; InfoVis’95)

17. Graphical Fisheye - 1992 • Sarkar & Brown, DEC SRC, CHI’92

18. Rubber Sheet - 1993 • Sarkar & Snibbe, Brown, UIST’93

19. Spiral Visualization - 1994 • Mackinlay, Robertson, & DeLine, Xerox PARC, UIST’94 • Large DAGs • Only shows current path

20. Hyperbolic Browser - 1994 • Lamping & Rao, Xerox PARC, UIST’94 • Projected onto circle • 1000’s of nodes

21. Continuous Zoom - 1995 • Bartram et al, Simon Fraser, UIST’95)

22. Fsviz - 1995 • Carriere and Kazman, Waterloo, InfoVis’95 • Up to 5000 nodes with no occlusion

23. Butterfly - 1995 • Mackinlay, Xerox PARC, CHI’95

24. Aaaamon.dll Edb500.dll Label.exe Oakley.dll Tapi.dll Wavemsp.dll Ksproxy.ax Ksqmf.ax Ksuser.dll Ksvpintf.ax Label.exe Lanman.drv Legacy.inf Linkinfo.dill Lmrt.dll Aaaamon.dll Edb500.dll Label.exe Oakley.dll Tapi.dll Wavemsp.dll Aaaamon.dll Edb500.dll Label.exe Oakley.dll Tapi.dll Wavemsp.dll Aaaamon.dll Edb500.dll Label.exe Oakley.dll Tapi.dll Wavemsp.dll Ksproxy.ax Ksuser.dll Label.exe Legacy.inf Lmrt.dll Ksproxy.ax Label.exe Lmrt.dll Index View - 1995 • T. Masui, Sharp, UIST95 • Vertical picks focus • Horizontal controls zoom

25. H3 - 1997 • Munzner, Stanford Univ., InfoVis’97 • Projected onto sphere • 20,000 nodes

26. Reconfigurable Disk Tree - 1998 • Jeong and Pang, UC Santa Cruz, InfoVis’98 • Number of identifiable nodes:3000 – 4000

27. Disk Tree - 1998 • Chi et al, Xerox PARC, CHI’98 • Compact 2D representation

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

29. Visualization Taxonomy - 1994 • Noik (Graphics Interface’94) • 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)

30. Unresolved Problems • Multiple focus

31. Folding Paper - proposal

32. Multiple Focus in 3D - proposal

33. InfoBowl - proposal

34. Unresolved Problems • Multiple focus • Multiple hierarchies

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

36. Time Tube - 1998 • Chi et al., Xerox PARC, CHI’98

37. Taxonomy Visualization - 2000 • Graham et al., Napier Univ. IJHCS 2000

38. MultiTrees - 1994 • Furnas & Zacks, Bell Core, CHI’94 • DAG’s with shared subtrees

39. XML3D - 2000 • Munzner, Stanford, IJHCS 2000

40. 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

41. Show Other Hierarchies Find: Daniel Robbins • Naming hierarchy is default • Allow maintainer to define hierarchies • Show search results in current view • Morph between views

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

43. One Selection, One Hierarchy

44. Visual Pivot – Other Hierarchies

45. Relationships Between People

46. Relationships Between Multiple People

47. Unresolved Problems • Multiple focus • Multiple hierarchies • Evaluate hierarchy visualizations

48. 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

49. 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

50. Two Styles of Visual Pivot • Sliding • Rotating