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On the Benefits and Drawbacks of Radial Diagrams

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Abstract

Visualizations based on circular shapes are oftentimes referred to as radial representations in the literature. Radial diagrams have recently gained increasing popularity in many application domains. One reason for this popularity is the aesthetic look of those diagrams. However, there are advantages for corresponding Cartesian (rectangular) representations as well, including possible perceptual benefits, more efficient use of rectangular screen space, or ease of implementation due to simpler graphical primitives. We describe several examples of visualizations that exist in Cartesian or radial form, and we discuss their respective benefits and drawbacks. We focus on the evaluation of those diagrams by comparative user studies. In particular, we consider how quantitative and qualitative evaluations, including eye tracking, can be employed to analyze which of the two visual mapping approaches is more suitable for given datasets and tasks.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Stephan Diehl, Fabian Beck, Felix Bott, Rainer Lutz, Natalia Konevtsova, Julian Heinrich, Markus Höferlin, Gennady Andrienko, and Natalia Andrienko for the very pleasant and productive collaborations that led to the results reported in this chapter. We thank Marcel Hlawatsch for Fig. 8. Furthermore, we would like to thank the many study participants for their patience and their interest especially in the eye tracking study. Without their support, this work would not have been possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Visualization Research Center (VISUS), University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Michael Burch (Postdoctoral Researcher of Computer Science) & Daniel Weiskopf (Professor of Computer Science)

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  1. Michael Burch
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  2. Daniel Weiskopf
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Correspondence to Michael Burch .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. CSIRO ICT Centre, Marsfield, New South Wales, Australia

    Weidong Huang

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Burch, M., Weiskopf, D. (2014). On the Benefits and Drawbacks of Radial Diagrams. In: Huang, W. (eds) Handbook of Human Centric Visualization. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7485-2_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7485-2_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7485-2

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