"Space Frames": Using space, color and animation in the visualization of complex graph systems

Abstract

This paper presents some of the findings of an ongoing study conducted by an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, artists and designers. It concerns the development of 3D user interfaces that aid the navigation and representation of large data structures through the usage of the HSV color space, and the ensuing "spatial frames". While data objects that have been colorized in various hues that carry equal saturation and brightness/transparency value seem to be equally foregrounded; varying saturation, brightness and transparency values add depth and hierarchy: Less saturated and/or darker, more transparent values recede into the background, while brighter, more highly saturated objects tend to become foregrounded. During our experiments we noticed that, when thus colorized, the edges connecting the nodes form visual spatial frames, which can result in the meaningful partitioning of 3D space. This property can be exploited to facilitate the display of overall trends within data sets, as well as to ease navigation, presenting overviews of the structure, and navigational help.