Visualising Geographically-Embedded Origin-Destination Flows: in 2D and immersive environments

TL;DR

This thesis presents novel visualization techniques for geographically-embedded origin-destination flows in 2D and immersive environments, evaluated through user studies to improve understanding of flow data.

Contribution

It introduces new OD flow visualization designs for 2D and immersive settings and assesses their effectiveness via controlled user experiments.

Findings

New visualization designs for OD flows in 2D and immersive environments

User studies show improved comprehension with proposed visualizations

Evaluation results inform best practices for flow visualization

Abstract

This thesis develops and evaluates effective techniques for visualisation of flows (e.g. of people, trade, knowledge) between places on geographic maps. This geographically-embedded flow data contains information about geographic locations, and flows from origin locations to destination locations. We explored the design space of OD flow visualisation in both 2D and immersive environments. We do so by creating novel OD flow visualisations in both environments, and then conducting controlled user studies to evaluate different designs.