University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom.
IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2012 Jul;18(7):1089-100. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2011.143.
Euler diagrams are often used to visualize intersecting data sets in applications such as criminology; genetics, medicine, and computer file systems. One interesting aspect of these diagrams is that some data sets cannot be drawn without breaking one or more "wellformedness properties," which are considered to reduce the user comprehension of the diagrams. However, it is possible to draw the same data with different diagrams, each of which breaks different wellformedness properties. Hence, some properties are "swappable," so motivating the study of which of the alternatives would be best to use. This paper reports on the two empirical studies to determine how wellformedness properties affect comprehension. One study was with abstract data, the other was with concrete data that visualized students' enrollment on university modules. We have results from both studies that imply that diagrams with concurrency or disconnected zones perform less well than other some other properties. Further, we have no results that imply that diagrams with brushing points adversely affect performance. Our data also indicate that nonsimple curves are preferred less than diagrams with other properties. These results will inform both human diagram designers and the developers of automated drawing systems on the best way to visualize data using Euler diagrams.
欧拉图常用于犯罪学、遗传学、医学和计算机文件系统等应用中，以可视化相交的数据集合。这些图表的一个有趣方面是，有些数据集如果不打破一个或多个“完整性属性”就无法绘制，这些属性被认为会降低用户对图表的理解。但是，通过不同的图表可以绘制相同的数据，每个图表都会打破不同的完整性属性。因此，某些属性是“可交换的”，因此有必要研究哪种替代方案最适合使用。本文报告了两项实证研究，以确定完整性属性如何影响理解。一项研究是针对抽象数据的，另一项研究是针对可视化学生在大学模块上注册情况的具体数据。我们从这两项研究中得出的结果表明，具有并发性或不连通区域的图表表现不如其他一些属性好。此外，我们没有结果表明带有刷动点的图表会对性能产生不利影响。我们的数据还表明，非简单曲线比具有其他属性的图表更不受欢迎。这些结果将为人类图表设计师和自动绘图系统的开发人员提供有关使用欧拉图可视化数据的最佳方法的信息。
