Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
From circles to spheres
Why should visualization be organized spherically? Spheres and circles
have proliferated in visualizations in recent years. One possible reason is
visual aesthetics: the circular shape, rotational symmetry and the regular
pattern of glyphs around the perimeter all contribute to a visually-pleasing
layout and implied sense of order. Further, there have been highly
successful 2D circular layouts for information visualization. Beyond pie
charts and Florence Nightingale's rose diagrams, there have been early
and artistic examples, such as hierarchical pie charts, genealogical
diagrams, and the hand-drawn diagrams of fraud networks by artist Mark
Lombardi, shown respectively in Fig 2.2.
Fig. 2.2.
Fike's Concentric Charts of the Sciences from 1890 [Fik90], a
genealogical chart from 1939 [Bri39], and artist Mark Lombardi's Iran-Contra
drawing from 1999 [Lom03].
Recent examples of successful circular visualizations include Circos
and Starburst (Fig. 2.3). Circular visualization is also popular in current
advertising-oriented visualizations and information graphics, as can be
seen in Chapter 1 of
Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic
Design
[Kla10] (“Datasphere” pp. 10-53); Chapter 3 of
DataFlow 2
[Kla12] (“Datacircles” pp. 80-100), and various examples from
Information Graphics
[Ren12] (e.g. pp. 223, 230, 236, 277, 299, 327, 399,
433).
Given the success of circular layouts, one might assume that spheres
would be successful too. Moving from circle to sphere adds a third spatial
dimension and the aesthetics of a sphere. Indeed, visualization of data
using spherical layouts provides unique possibilities:
•
Intuitive navigation of spheres has been shown with interface
paradigms such as Virtual Trackballs [Sho92], and proven in
highly successful video games such as
Super Mario Galaxy
(Fig. 2.3, right image).
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