Mélange: space folding for visual exploration.
Navigating in large geometric spaces-such as maps, social networks, or long documents-typically requires a sequence of pan and zoom actions. However, this strategy is often ineffective and cumbersome, especially when trying to study and compare several distant objects. We propose a new distortion technique that folds the intervening space to guarantee visibility of multiple focus regions. The folds themselves show contextual information and support unfolding and paging interactions. We conducted a study comparing the space-folding technique to existing approaches and found that participants performed significantly better with the new technique. We also describe how to implement this distortion technique and give an in-depth case study on how to apply it to the visualization of large-scale 1D time-series data.
Elmqvist
Niklas
N
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA. elm@purdue.edu
Riche
Yann
Y
Henry-Riche
Nathalie
N
Fekete
Jean-Daniel
JD
D000465:Algorithms; D003196:Computer Graphics; D003198:Computer Simulation; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D014584:User-Computer Interface