IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics

SineStream: Improving the Readability of Streamgraphs by Minimizing Sine Illusion Effects

C. Bu, Q. Zhang, Q. Wang, J. Zhang, M. Sedlmair, O. Deussen, Y. Wang

Material

Abstract

In this paper, we proposeSineStream, a new variant of streamgraphs that improves their readability by minimizing sineillusion effects. Such effects reflect the tendency of humans to take the orthogonal rather than the vertical distance between two curvesas their distance. InSineStream, we connect the readability of streamgraphs with minimizing sine illusions and by doing so provide aperceptual foundation for their design. As the geometry of a streamgraph is controlled by its baseline (the bottom-most curve) and theordering of the layers, we re-interpret baseline computation and layer ordering algorithms in terms of reducing sine illusion effects. Forbaseline computation, we improve previous methods by introducing a Gaussian weight to penalize layers with large thickness changes.For layer ordering, three design requirements are proposed and implemented through a hierarchical clustering algorithm. Quantitativeexperiments and user studies demonstrate thatSineStreamimproves the readability and aesthetics of streamgraphs compared tostate-of-the-art methods

BibTeX

@article{Bu2020SineStreamImprovingReadability,
  author     = {C. Bu and Q. Zhang and Q. Wang and J. Zhang and M. Sedlmair and O. Deussen and Y. Wang},
  doi        = {10.1109/tvcg.2020.3030404},
  journal    = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
  pages      = {1--1},
  publisher  = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)},
  title      = {SineStream: Improving the Readability of Streamgraphs by Minimizing Sine Illusion Effects},
  year       = {2020},
  url        = {http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/publikationen/Bu2020SineStreamImprovingReadability},
}