Simplifying Network Visualizations with Motif Glyphs Cody Dunne

Who Uses Network Analysis Sociology Scientometrics Biology Urban Planning Politics Archaeology WWW

Better Layouts Alternate Visualizations Hachul & Jünger, 2006 Gove et al, 2011; Henry &

Lostpedia articles Observations 1: There are repeating patterns in networks (motifs) 2: Motifs often

Our approach: Motif Simplification to reduce visualization complexity

Motif Simplification Fan Motif 2 -Parallel Motif

Glyph Design Guidelines • Representative: topology, count & attributes • Easily distinguishable • Easily

Interactivity Fan motif: 133 leaf vertices with head vertex “Theory”

User Impressions “I’m overwhelmed, … this is like one of those vision tests at

Discussion Motif simplification effective for • Reducing complexity • Understanding larger relationships However •

Take Away Messages Motif simplification reduces the complexity of network visualizations. Free and open

Slides: 25

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Simplifying Network Visualizations with Motif Glyphs Cody Dunne and Ben Shneiderman {cdunne, ben}@cs. umd. edu 29 th Annual Human-Computer Interaction Lab Symposium, May 22– 23, 2011 College Park, MD

Network Analysis is Hard

Who Uses Network Analysis Sociology Scientometrics Biology Urban Planning Politics Archaeology WWW

So what can we do?

Better Layouts Alternate Visualizations Hachul & Jünger, 2006 Gove et al, 2011; Henry & Fekete, 2006; Dunne et al, 2012; Freire et al, 2010; Wattenberg, 2006 Graph Summarization Navlakha et al, 2008

Lostpedia articles Observations 1: There are repeating patterns in networks (motifs) 2: Motifs often dominate the visualization 3: Motifs members can be functionally equivalent

Our approach: Motif Simplification to reduce visualization complexity

Motif Simplification Fan Motif 2 -Parallel Motif

Lostpedia articles

Glyph Design Guidelines • Representative: topology, count & attributes • Easily distinguishable • Easily comparable • Allow overlaps

Glyph Design: Fan

Glyph Design: Parallel

Interactivity Fan motif: 133 leaf vertices with head vertex “Theory”

Voson Web Crawl

Implemented in Node. XL

User Impressions “I’m overwhelmed, … this is like one of those vision tests at the eye doctor” “Now I can see the central pages…[and] pairwise connections”

Discussion Motif simplification effective for • Reducing complexity • Understanding larger relationships However • Frequent motifs may not be covered • Glyph design has tradeoffs Details & algorithms in Tech Report

Take Away Messages Motif simplification reduces the complexity of network visualizations. Free and open source next month in Node. XL: http: //nodexl. codeplex. com/ http: //www. cs. umd. edu/hcil/motifs/ Thanks to: Social Media Research Foundation Connected Action Consulting Group