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Enhanced Hexagon-Tiling Algorithm for Map-Like Information Visualisation

Published: 24 August 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Hierarchical information is ubiquitous, and analysing such information is one of the common tasks performed by its users. Map-like visualisations, which resemble geographic maps, can be a useful tool for perceiving hierarchical information. Maps have the advantage that the majority of ordinary users can easily understand them without prior training. This paper presents a novel method for visualising hierarchical data in a form resembling a geographic map, using hexagon tiling. Our method can be used for visualising general hierarchical data, such as organisational structures, library catalogues, file systems, and many more. Like treemaps, our new method is area-based, thus it not only reveals hierarchy but also other attributes. Unlike treemaps, however, our method produces visualisations that resemble geographic maps in shape and appearance. Several tactics are employed to control the space-division process and aspect ratio. In this paper we present experiments involving our visualisation, evaluations of results, comparisons with other methods, and discuss advantages and potential issues.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
VINCI '15: Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction
August 2015
185 pages
ISBN:9781450334822
DOI:10.1145/2801040
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 24 August 2015

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Author Tags

  1. Information visualisation
  2. geographic map
  3. hierarchy
  4. treemap

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  • Research
  • Refereed limited

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VINCI '15

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VINCI '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 12 of 32 submissions, 38%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 71 of 193 submissions, 37%

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  • (2023)The Landscape of Visual Information Communication and Interaction ResearchProceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction10.1145/3615522.3615523(1-8)Online publication date: 22-Sep-2023
  • (2022)GIScience research challenges for realizing discrete global grid systems as a Digital EarthBig Earth Data10.1080/20964471.2021.20129126:3(358-379)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2022
  • (2020)Survey of treemap layout algorithmsProceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction10.1145/3430036.3430041(1-9)Online publication date: 8-Dec-2020
  • (2020)The State of the Art in Map‐Like VisualizationComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1403139:3(647-674)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2020
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  • (2019)Shape Decision-Making in Map-Like Visualization Design Using the Simulated Annealing AlgorithmIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.29399777(131577-131592)Online publication date: 2019
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