Contact Trees: Network Visualization beyond Nodes and Edges

Abstract

Node-Link diagrams make it possible to take a quick glance at how nodes (or actors) in a network are connected by edges (or ties). A conventional network diagram of a “contact tree” maps out a root and branches that represent the structure of nodes and edges, often without further specifying leaves or fruits that would have grown from small branches. By furnishing such a network structure with leaves and fruits, we reveal details about “contacts” in our ContactTrees upon which ties and relationships are constructed. Our elegant design employs a bottom-up approach that resembles a recent attempt to understand subjective well-being by means of a series of emotions. Such a bottom-up approach to social-network studies decomposes each tie into a series of interactions or contacts, which can help deepen our understanding of the complexity embedded in a network structure. Unlike previous network visualizations, ContactTrees highlight how relationships form and change based upon interactions among actors, as well as how relationships and networks vary by contact attributes. Based on a botanical tree metaphor, the design is easy to construct and the resulting tree-like visualization can display many properties at both tie and contact levels, thus recapturing a key ingredient missing from conventional techniques of network visualization. We demonstrate ContactTrees using data sets consisting of up to three waves of 3-month contact diaries over the 2004-2012 period, and discuss how this design can be applied to other types of datasets.

A content analysis-based approach to explore simulation verification and identify its current challenges

“…Node-link diagrams provide intuitive representations of contact relationships by utilizing basic visual geometries to indicate connections. Sallaberry, Fu [143] show that decomposing a sequence of interactions within a social network yields insight into static network structure as well as dynamic relationship formations and changes over time. Jacomy, Venturini [144] provide an intuitive layout for visualizing relational, network data for facilitating exploration through spatializing networks.…”

Building Scholarly Data Forest

“…It is quite recently that a new tree view visualization has been proposed [1] with a (real) tree shape visualization called ContactTrees (since they were originally designed to show person's social ties). Such trees have an egocentric approach with the ability to show multilevel aspects of social interactions in just a glance [1,2,3,4,5] that may be of help to sociologists as well as data managers as suggested by [2]. Our work is very much inspired by the work presented in [2].…”

A heuristic extending the Squarified treemapping algorithm

“…The problem of displaying hierarchical data can be faced with many different approaches, depending on the requirements that have to be satisfied. One of the first methods developed for this purpose was the node-edge diagram [23,20,15], able to represent in the most faithful way a hierarchical structure. Since then, several techniques have been presented to improve its effectiveness [14,4,13], as well as make graphic user interfaces more attractive [8,17].…”