Visual Similarity Perception of Directed Acyclic Graphs: A Study on Influencing Factors

Abstract

While visual comparison of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) is commonly encountered in various disciplines (e.g., finance, biology), knowledge about humans' perception of graph similarity is currently quite limited. By graph similarity perception we mean how humans perceive commonalities and differences in graphs and herewith come to a similarity judgment. As a step toward filling this gap the study reported in this paper strives to identify factors which influence the similarity perception of DAGs. In particular, we conducted a card-sorting study employing a qualitative and quantitative analysis approach to identify 1) groups of DAGs that are perceived as similar by the participants and 2) the reasons behind their choice of groups. Our results suggest that similarity is mainly influenced by the number of levels, the number of nodes on a level, and the overall shape of the graph.

Assessing 2D visual encoding of 3D spatial connectivity

“…Thus, it would be useful to verify whether these expectations apply to spatial contact datasets. It would also be interesting to explore the applicability of these perceptual studies in evaluating other common tasks involved in interpreting 3C data, such as visually comparing connectivity across multiple datasets (Ballweg et al, 2018).…”

A Supporting Tool for Enhancing User’s Mental Model Elicitation and Decision-Making in User Experience Research

“…On the one hand, most of the descriptive analyses are intended to present Card Sorting data using concrete settings (Bayram et al, 2016;Kelley, Lee, et al, 2017;. Cluster analysis is one of the most used methods to analyze Card Sorting data (Adamides et al, 2015;Ali et al, 2019;Ballweg et al, 2018;Cho et al, 2018;De Lima Salgado et al, 2019;Doubleday, 2013;El Said, 2014;Erol, 2018;Gatsou et al, 2012;Gonzalez-Zuniga & Carrabina, 2016;Goodman-Deane et al, 2008;Guo & Yan, 2011;Huang & Ku, 2016;Lantz et al, 2019;Lucci & Paternò, 2015;Maat & Lentz, 2011;Mesgari et al, 2019Mesgari et al, , 2015Nurcahyanti & Suhardi, 2014;Paea & Baird, 2018b;Palmer & O'Neill, 2010;Petrie et al, 2011;Reese et al, 2018a;Robles et al, 2019;Roth, 2013;Sampson, 2005;Santos & Boticario, 2015;Schmettow & Sommer, 2016;Shen & Prior, 2013;Slegers & Donoso, 2012;Thomas & Johnson, 2013;Urrutia et al, 2017;Vashitz et al, 2013;Verhoeven & Gemert-Pijnen, 2010;J. Wentzel et al, 2016;Jobke Wentzel et ...…”