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Uncovering Strengths and Weaknesses of Radial Visualizations---an Empirical Approach
November/December 2010 (vol. 16 no. 6)
pp. 935-942
ASCII Text
x 
 
Stephan Diehl, Fabian Beck, Michael Burch, "Uncovering Strengths and Weaknesses of Radial Visualizations---an Empirical Approach," IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 935-942, November/December, 2010.
 
 
BibTex
x
 
@article{ 10.1109/TVCG.2010.209,
author = {Stephan Diehl and Fabian Beck and Michael Burch},
title = {Uncovering Strengths and Weaknesses of Radial Visualizations---an Empirical Approach},
journal ={IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
volume = {16},
number = {6},
issn = {1077-2626},
year = {2010},
pages = {935-942},
doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TVCG.2010.209},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
}
 
 
RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote
x 
 
TY - JOUR
JO - IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
TI - Uncovering Strengths and Weaknesses of Radial Visualizations---an Empirical Approach
IS - 6
SN - 1077-2626
SP935
EP942
EPD - 935-942
A1 - Stephan Diehl,
A1 - Fabian Beck,
A1 - Michael Burch,
PY - 2010
KW - radial visualization
KW - user study
KW - visual memory
VL - 16
JA - IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
ER -
 
Stephan Diehl, University of Trier
Fabian Beck, University of Trier
Michael Burch, University of Stuttgart
Radial visualizations play an important role in the information visualization community. But the decision to choose a radial coordinate system is rather based on intuition than on scientific foundations. The empirical approach presented in this paper aims at uncovering strengths and weaknesses of radial visualizations by comparing them to equivalent ones in Cartesian coordinate systems. We identified memorizing positions of visual elements as a generic task when working with visualizations. A first study with 674 participants provides a broad data spectrum for exploring differences between the two visualization types. A second, complementing study with fewer participants focuses on further questions raised by the first study. Our findings document that Cartesian visualizations tend to outperform their radial counterparts especially with respect to answer times. Nonetheless, radial visualization seem to be more appropriate for focusing on a particular data dimension.

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Index Terms:
radial visualization, user study, visual memory
Citation:
Stephan Diehl, Fabian Beck, Michael Burch, "Uncovering Strengths and Weaknesses of Radial Visualizations---an Empirical Approach," IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 935-942, Nov.-Dec. 2010, doi:10.1109/TVCG.2010.209
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