PAIR – Pairwise Visual Comparison of Directed Acyclic Graphs: A HCI Perspective

The goal of this project is to improve visualizations for pairwise network comparisons via new cognition-driven design guidelines. This project will specifically concentrate on the visual comparison of directed acyclic graphs in node-link diagrams. Such comparison is needed, for example, in the analysis of phylogenetic trees in biology or in the assessment of contagion in financial networks. In these cases, the domain experts concentrate on finding commonalities and differences between the two networks being compared. This analysis is often undertaken in a visualized form. Visual exploration enables to identify where the differences are located and thereby to extract insights from these differences. Effective visual network comparison requires a well-designed visualization. Effective visualization uses guidelines, which are inter alia derived from research in cognitive psychology and human-computer interaction (HCI). Until now, HCI research has mainly focused on deriving guidelines for the visualization of single networks. There are still many open research questions concerning the comparison of two or more networks in node-link diagrams

Team: Margit Pohl (contact person) and Günter Wallner

Partners: TU Darmstadt

• Visual Analytics
• Human-Centered Evaluation
• Human-Centered Design
• Hcv