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Hierarchy Visualization Designs and their Impact on Perception and Problem Solving Strategies

Authors:
Nicholas H. Müller
Benny Liebold
Daniel Pietschmann
Peter Ohler
Paul Rosenthal

Keywords: User Study; Hierarchy Visualization; Perception; Eye-tracking

Abstract:
Visualizing hierarchical structures is of great importance in many economic and scientific applications. Many different approaches have been developed and enhanced in the last decades. Each of them claims specific advantages over competing methods, usually referring to visual or structural properties. Although several user studies investigated the usefulness of specific approaches, for practitioners it often remains unclear what the practical advantages of the approaches are and in which contexts they are useful. In our user study, we systematically investigated the value of three frequently used visualization types for the intuitive understanding of hierarchical data: treemap, icicle plot, and nodelink. We measured user performance in terms of correctness and time and tracked eye movements for each participant. The results regarding the user performance revealed that nodelink and icicle plot yield expected and comparable results, whereas treemap is only exceeding chance level for one easy task. Still, the analysis of eye-tracking measures suggests that treemaps draw visual attention better to relevant elements. Finally, implications for facilitating human intuition and problem solving strategies are discussed.

Pages: 93 to 101

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2017

Publication date: March 19, 2017

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4138

ISBN: 978-1-61208-538-8

Location: Nice, France

Dates: from March 19, 2017 to March 23, 2017