What is the Best Way to Represent Directionality in Network Visualizations?

A new scientific paper by Danny Holten and Jarke J. van Wijk entitled “A User Study on Visualizing Directed Edges in Graphs” (Download, View), looks at several algorithms for representing groups of directional lines to try and find the least confusing methods for users.

Their experiments consisted of testing the different visual techniques (or combinations of the techniques), on which participants performed specific tasks in which they had to answer whether or not there were directed connection from one point to another in a randomly generated graph. Response times and accuracy were measured and analyzed. The different techniques tested were: “arrow”, “light-to-dark”, “dark-to-light”, “green-to-red”, “curved”, and “tapered”.

via What is the Best Way to Represent Directionality in Network Visualizations? – information aesthetics.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a visualization scientist working for a federal research lab, aiding researchers to discover the insights buried within their terabyte datasets generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. He also runs VizWorld.com .