Polyarchy visualization: visualizing multiple intersecting hierarchies

ABSTRACT

We describe a new information structure composed of multiple intersecting hierarchies, which we call Polyarchies. Visualizing polyarchies enables use of novel views for discovery of relationships which are very difficult using existing hierarchy visualization tools. This paper will describe the visualization design and system architecture challenges as well as our current solutions. A Mid-Tier Cache architecture is used as a "polyarchy server" which supports a novel web-based polyarchy visualization technique, called Visual Pivot. A series of five user studies guided iterative design of Visual Pivot

REFERENCES

• 1: Box, D., Ehnebuske, D, Kakivaya, G., Layman, A., Mendelsohn, N., Nielsen, H.F., Thatte, S., and Winer, D., SOAP: Simple Object Access Protocol. In MSDN Library, January 2001, Microsoft.
• 2: J. Carriere , R. Kazman, Research report: Interacting with huge hierarchies: beyond cone trees, Proceedings of the 1995 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, p.74, October 30-31, 1995, Atlanta, Georgia
• 3: Ed H. Chi , James Pitkow , Jock Mackinlay , Peter Pirolli , Rich Gossweiler , Stuart K. Card, Visualizing the evolution of Web ecologies, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.400-407, April 18-23, 1998, Los Angeles, California, United States [doi>10.1145/274644.274699]
• 4: Fairchild, K.M., Poltrock, S.E., & Furnas, G.W. SemNet: Three-dimensional graphic representation of large knowledge bases. Cognitive Science and its Application for Human-Computer Interface. R. Guindon (Ed). Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersey, 1988.
• 5: G. W. Furnas, Generalized fisheye views, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.16-23, April 13-17, 1986, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
• 6: George W. Furnas , Jeff Zacks, Multitrees: enriching and reusing hierarchical structure, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: celebrating interdependence, p.330-336, April 24-28, 1994, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/191666.191778]
• 7: Martin Graham , Jessie B. Kennedy , Chris Hand, A comparison of set-based and graph-based visualisations of overlapping classification hierarchies, Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces, p.41-50, May 2000, Palermo, Italy [doi>10.1145/345513.345243]
• 8: Alex Homer , Alex Horner, IE5, XML AND XSL Programmer's Reference, Wrox Press Ltd., Birmingham, UK, 1999
• 9: Brian Johnson , Ben Shneiderman, Tree-Maps: a space-filling approach to the visualization of hierarchical information structures, Proceedings of the 2nd conference on Visualization '91, October 22-25, 1991, San Diego, California
• 10: John Lamping , Ramana Rao, Laying out and visualizing large trees using a hyperbolic space, Proceedings of the 7th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.13-14, November 02-04, 1994, Marina del Rey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/192426.192430]
• 11: T. Munzner, H3: laying out large directed graphs in 3D hyperbolic space, Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis '97), p.2, October 18-25, 1997
• 12: George G. Robertson , Jock D. Mackinlay , Stuart K. Card, Cone Trees: animated 3D visualizations of hierarchical information, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Reaching through technology, p.189-194, April 27-May 02, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States [doi>10.1145/108844.108883]
• 13: Tesler, L. The Smalltalk Environment. In Byte, August 1981, p. 90.
• 14: The Burton Group. MetaDirectory FAQ. Catalyst '99 Conference, July 1999. See http://www.netapps.org/Events/ HTMLDocs/workshopmetadirectoryfaq.htm.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.1 Systems and Information Theory
          Subjects: Information theory

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES
      D.1.7 Visual Programming

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.6 SIMULATION AND MODELING
      I.6.8 Types of Simulation
          Subjects: Visual

General Terms:
Measurement, Performance, Theory

Keywords:
3D, animation, hierarchy, information visualization, metadirectory, polyarchy, query language, user studies