GLO-STIX: Graph-Level Operations for Specifying Techniques and Interactive eXploration

• Published in: IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics 2014-12, Vol.20 (12), p.2320
• Main Authors: Stolper, Charles D, Kahng, Minsuk, Lin, Zhiyuan, Foerster, Florian, Goel, Aakash, Stasko, John, Chau, Duen Horng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1941-0506
• DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2014.2346444

The field of graph visualization has produced a wealth of visualization techniques for accomplishing a variety of analysis tasks. Therefore analysts often rely on a suite of different techniques, and visual graph analysis application builders strive to provide this breadth of techniques. To provide a holistic model for specifying network visualization techniques (as opposed to considering each technique in isolation) we present the Graph-Level Operations (GLO) model. We describe a method for identifying GLOs and apply it to identify five classes of GLOs, which can be flexibly combined to re-create six canonical graph visualization techniques. We discuss advantages of the GLO model, including potentially discovering new, effective network visualization techniques and easing the engineering challenges of building multi-technique graph visualization applications. Finally, we implement the GLOs that we identified into the GLO-STIX prototype system that enables an analyst to interactively explore a graph by applying GLOs.