2017/11/08 by Saturnino Luz, Luz, Saturnino, Masood Masoodian +1
Computer Science · Psychology · Decision Sciences · #Data Visualization and Analytics #Cognitive and psychological constructs research #Complex Systems and Decision Making
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1711.03065
We present an application of mosaic diagrams to the visualisation of set\nrelations. Venn and Euler diagrams are the best known visual representations of\nsets and their relationships (intersections, containment or subsets, exclusion\nor disjointness). In recent years, alternative forms of visualisation have been\nproposed. Among them, linear diagrams have been shown to compare favourably to\nVenn and Euler diagrams, in supporting non-interactive assessment of set\nrelationships. Recent studies that compared several variants of linear diagrams\nhave demonstrated that users perform best at tasks involving identification of\nintersections, disjointness and subsets when using a horizontally drawn linear\ndiagram with thin lines representing sets, and employing vertical lines as\nguide lines. The essential visual task the user needs to perform in order to\ninterpret this kind of diagram is vertical alignment of parallel lines and\ndetection of overlaps. Space-filling mosaic diagrams which support this same\nvisual task have been used in other applications, such as the visualization of\nschedules of activities, where they have been shown to be superior to linear\nGantt charts. In this paper, we present an application of mosaic diagrams for\nvisualization of set relationships, and compare it to linear diagrams in terms\nof accuracy, time-to-answer, and subjective ratings of perceived task\ndifficulty. The study participants exhibited similar performance on both\nvisualisations, suggesting that mosaic diagrams are a good alternative to Venn\nand Euler diagrams, and that the choice between linear diagrams and mosaics may\nbe solely guided by visual design considerations.\n