Combining Multiple View Components for Exploratory Visualization

TL;DR

This paper reviews and classifies various approaches to combining multiple visual components for exploratory data visualization, especially for complex structured data like graphs.

Contribution

It provides a systematic description of view components and their combinations, clarifying the design space for multi-view visualization tools.

Findings

Classifies basic visual components for multi-view visualization.

Analyzes common interaction patterns like overview plus-detail.

Provides a framework for designing combined visualization modules.

Abstract

The analysis of structured complex data, such as clustered graph based datasets, usually applies a variety of visual representation techniques and formats. The majority of currently available tools and approaches to exploratory visualization are built on integrated schemes for simultaneous displaying of multiple aspects of studying objects and processes. Usually, such schemes partition screen space that is composed of multiple views and adopt interaction patterns to focus on data-driven items. Widely known concepts as overview plus-detail and focus-plus-context are ambiguous in interpretation by means of technical terms. Therefore, their implementation by UI design practitioners need reviews and a classification of the basic approaches to visual composition of graphical representation modules. We propose a description of basic components of the view and focus and an overview of their multiple combinations.