research-article

Visualizing Sets with Linear Diagrams

Authors:

Peter ChapmanAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 22, Issue 6

Article No.: 27, Pages 1 - 39

https://doi.org/10.1145/2810012

Published: 24 September 2015 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents the first design principles that optimize the visualization of sets using linear diagrams. These principles are justified through empirical studies that evaluate the impact of graphical features on task performance. Linear diagrams represent sets using straight line segments, with line overlaps corresponding to set intersections. This study builds on recent empirical research, which establishes that linear diagrams can be superior to prominent set visualization techniques, namely Euler and Venn diagrams. We address the problem of how to best visualize overlapping sets using linear diagrams. To solve the problem, we investigate which graphical features of linear diagrams significantly impact user task performance. To this end, we conducted seven crowdsourced empirical studies involving a total of 1,760 participants. These studies allowed us to identify the following design principles, which significantly aid task performance: use a minimal number of line segments, use guidelines where overlaps start and end, and draw lines that are thin as opposed to thick bars. We also evaluated the following graphical properties that did not significantly impact task performance: color, orientation, and set order. The results are brought to life through a freely available software implementation that automatically draws linear diagrams with user-controlled graphical choices. An important consequence of our research is that users are now able to create effective visualizations of sets automatically, thus improving human--computer interaction.

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Cited By

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Depian TDobler AKern CWulms J(2024)Minimizing Corners in Colored Rectilinear GridsWALCOM: Algorithms and Computation10.1007/978-981-97-0566-5_11(134-148)Online publication date: 29-Feb-2024
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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Volume 22, Issue 6

December 2015

232 pages

ISSN:1073-0516

EISSN:1557-7325

DOI:10.1145/2830543

Editor:
Ken Hinckley
Microsoft Research

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 24 September 2015

Accepted: 01 July 2015

Revised: 01 July 2015

Received: 01 March 2015

Published in TOCHI Volume 22, Issue 6

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1109/VDS63897.2024.00008
Depian TDobler AKern CWulms J(2024)Minimizing Corners in Colored Rectilinear GridsWALCOM: Algorithms and Computation10.1007/978-981-97-0566-5_11(134-148)Online publication date: 29-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-0566-5_11
Rodgers PChapman PBlake ANöllenburg MWallinger MDobler A(2024)Hoop Diagrams: A Set Visualization MethodDiagrammatic Representation and Inference10.1007/978-3-031-71291-3_31(377-392)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-71291-3_31
Gottfried B(2024)Indeterminate Set Space DiagramsDiagrammatic Representation and Inference10.1007/978-3-031-71291-3_18(215-231)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-71291-3_18
Wallinger MDobler ANöllenburg M(2023)LinSets.zip: Compressing Linear Set DiagramsIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.326193429:6(2875-2887)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2023
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Zhou YRathore APurvine EWang B(2023)Topological Simplifications of HypergraphsIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2022.315389529:7(3209-3225)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2023
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Gerrard MBorges MDwyer MFilieri A(2022)Conditional Quantitative Program AnalysisIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2020.301677848:4(1212-1227)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2022
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Chapman PSim KChen H(2022)Minimising line segments in linear diagrams is NP-hardJournal of Computer Languages10.1016/j.cola.2022.10113671(101136)Online publication date: Aug-2022
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Dobler ANöllenburg M(2022)On Computing Optimal Linear DiagramsDiagrammatic Representation and Inference10.1007/978-3-031-15146-0_2(20-36)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2022
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