Force-Directed Layout of Order Diagrams using Dimensional Reduction

TL;DR

This paper introduces ReDraw, a novel force-directed algorithm that automatically generates aesthetically pleasing order diagrams by embedding data in high dimensions and iteratively reducing to two dimensions, ensuring clarity and structural correctness.

Contribution

ReDraw adapts force-directed graph drawing techniques to order diagrams, incorporating dimension reduction and fixed element positioning for improved automatic diagram generation.

Findings

ReDraw outperforms comparable methods on lattice diagrams with high distributivity.

The algorithm maintains order diagram properties throughout the reduction process.

User study confirms improved readability and aesthetic quality of ReDraw-generated diagrams.

Abstract

Order diagrams allow human analysts to understand and analyze structural properties of ordered data. While an experienced expert can create easily readable order diagrams, the automatic generation of those remains a hard task. In this work, we adapt force-directed approaches, which are known to generate aesthetically-pleasing drawings of graphs, to the realm of order diagrams. Our algorithm ReDraw thereby embeds the order in a high dimension and then iteratively reduces the dimension until a two-dimensional drawing is achieved. To improve aesthetics, this reduction is equipped with two force-directed steps where one optimizes on distances of nodes and the other on distances of lines in order to satisfy a set of a priori fixed conditions. By respecting an invariant about the vertical position of the elements in each step of our algorithm we ensure that the resulting drawings satisfy all necessary properties of order diagrams. Finally, we present the results of a user study to demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms comparable approaches on drawings of lattices with a high degree of distributivity.