IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2021 Feb;27(2):1612-1622. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2020.3030411. Epub 2021 Jan 28.
In various domains, there are abundant streams or sequences of multi-item data of various kinds, e.g. streams of news and social media texts, sequences of genes and sports events, etc. Comparison is an important and general task in data analysis. For comparing data streams involving multiple items (e.g., words in texts, actors or action types in action sequences, visited places in itineraries, etc.), we propose Co-Bridges, a visual design involving connection and comparison techniques that reveal similarities and differences between two streams. Co-Bridges use river and bridge metaphors, where two sides of a river represent data streams, and bridges connect temporally or sequentially aligned segments of streams. Commonalities and differences between these segments in terms of involvement of various items are shown on the bridges. Interactive query tools support the selection of particular stream subsets for focused exploration. The visualization supports both qualitative (common and distinct items) and quantitative (stream volume, amount of item involvement) comparisons. We further propose Comparison-of-Comparisons, in which two or more Co-Bridges corresponding to different selections are juxtaposed. We test the applicability of the Co-Bridges in different domains, including social media text streams and sports event sequences. We perform an evaluation of the users' capability to understand and use Co-Bridges. The results confirm that Co-Bridges is effective for supporting pair-wise visual comparisons in a wide range of applications.
在各个领域中，都存在着大量的多项目数据流或序列，例如新闻和社交媒体文本流、基因和体育赛事序列等。比较是数据分析中的一项重要且通用的任务。对于涉及多个项目的数据流（例如，文本中的单词、动作序列中的演员或动作类型、行程中的访问地点等），我们提出了 Co-Bridges，这是一种涉及连接和比较技术的视觉设计，用于揭示两个数据流之间的相似性和差异性。Co-Bridges 使用河流和桥梁的隐喻，其中河流的两岸代表数据流，桥梁连接时间或顺序对齐的流段。在桥梁上显示了这些段落在各种项目参与方面的共同点和差异。交互式查询工具支持选择特定的流子集进行重点探索。可视化支持定性（常见和独特的项目）和定量（流体积、项目参与度）比较。我们进一步提出了 Comparison-of-Comparisons，其中并排比较了两个或更多对应于不同选择的 Co-Bridges。我们测试了 Co-Bridges 在不同领域中的适用性，包括社交媒体文本流和体育赛事序列。我们评估了用户理解和使用 Co-Bridges 的能力。结果证实，Co-Bridges 在广泛的应用中支持成对的可视化比较是有效的。
