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

Abstract

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.

GraphUnit: Evaluating Interactive Graph Visualizations Using Crowdsourcing

“…Designers can quickly prototype multiple competing solutions and test them online with minimal effort on a mix of tasks that was elicited as part of the design process. In this sense, our approach fits well with current efforts to speed up visualization prototyping, such as Lyra [SH14] or GLO‐STIX [SKL*14], by providing a quick way of evaluating prototypes developed using such systems.…”

PERSEUS-HUB: Interactive and Collective Exploration of Large-Scale Graphs

“…Refs. [7,13,14] take an exploratory search approach based on the assumption that users are non-experts and unfamiliar with their datasets. Therefore, they guide users to perform analysis by incrementally querying information or browsing through the various relationships in the datasets to discover any unexpected results.…”

“…By computing degree-of-interest scores for associated content using a random-walk algorithm, Refinery allows users to visualize sub-graphs of items relevant to their queries. Similarly, GLO-STIX [7] is a graph visualization system that allows a user to interactively explore a graph by applying Graph-Level Operations (GLOs). GLOs are encapsulated manipulations of a graph visualization that allow a user to incrementally modify a graph without committing to a specific graph type, giving the user the choice of fully customizing their visualization through a set of primitive graph-level operations.…”

“…Table 1 gives a qualitative comparison of PERSEUS-HUB with existing graph visualization tools. GLO-STIX [7] ? FACETS [13] Voyager 2 [14] Signposts [15] NodeTrix [16] PivotSlice [17] Refinery [18] Apolo [8] OPAvion [19] NetRay [22] Motif-Simp [23] PERSEUS [9,10] PERSEUS-HUB…”

Scalable graph exploration and visualization: Sensemaking challenges and opportunities

“…• How do we choose an appropriate view given a particular graph [73]? • How can both structure and lower-level node and edge data be co-visualized?…”