RouteFlow: Trajectory-Aware Animated Transitions

TL;DR

RouteFlow is a novel trajectory-aware animation method that enhances visualization of object movements by highlighting local hotspots and global trends while reducing occlusion, inspired by bus route analogy.

Contribution

It introduces a new animation technique that balances global and local information in trajectory visualization, addressing limitations of existing methods.

Findings

Better identification of global trends and local hotspots.

Performs comparably in tracking object movements.

Reduces occlusion compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Abstract

Animating objects' movements is widely used to facilitate tracking changes and observing both the global trend and local hotspots where objects converge or diverge. Existing methods, however, often obscure critical local hotspots by only considering the start and end positions of objects' trajectories. To address this gap, we propose RouteFlow, a trajectory-aware animated transition method that effectively balances the global trend and local hotspots while minimizing occlusion. RouteFlow is inspired by a real-world bus route analogy: objects are regarded as passengers traveling together, with local hotspots representing bus stops where these passengers get on and off. Based on this analogy, animation paths are generated like bus routes, with the object layout generated similarly to seat allocation according to their destinations. Compared with state-of-the-art methods, RouteFlow better facilitates identifying the global trend and locating local hotspots while performing comparably in tracking objects' movements.