Experimental analysis of the accessibility of drawings with few segments

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether graph drawings with fewer segments are more aesthetically appealing and easier to interpret, through experimental analysis of user preferences and task performance on different graph types and layouts.

Contribution

It provides an empirical evaluation of the aesthetic and functional benefits of segment-efficient graph drawings across various graph types and layout algorithms.

Findings

Fewer segments can improve aesthetic appeal.

Segment-efficient drawings may enhance task performance.

User preferences vary with graph type and layout.

Abstract

The visual complexity of a graph drawing is defined as the number of geometric objects needed to represent all its edges. In particular, one object may represent multiple edges, e.g., one needs only one line segment to draw two collinear incident edges. We study the question if drawings with few segments have a better aesthetic appeal and help the user to asses the underlying graph. We design an experiment that investigates two different graph types (trees and sparse graphs), three different layout algorithms for trees, and two different layout algorithms for sparse graphs. We asked the users to give an aesthetic ranking on the layouts and to perform a furthest-pair or shortest-path task on the drawings.