School of Computing

Evaluating the Comprehension of Euler Diagrams

Florence Benoy and Peter Rodgers

In 11th International Conference on Information Visualization (IV 2007), pages 182-196. IEEE Computer Society, IEEE, July 2007 Typos corrected from published version.

Abstract

We describe an empirical investigation into layout criteria that can help with the comprehension of Euler diagrams. Euler diagrams are used to represent set inclusion in applications such as teaching set theory, database querying, software engineering, filing system organisation and bio-informatics. Research in automatically laying out Euler diagrams for use with these applications is at an early stage, and our work attempts to aid this research by informing layout designers about the importance of various Euler diagram aesthetic criteria. The three criteria under investigation were: contour jaggedness, zone area inequality and edge closeness. Subjects were asked to interpret diagrams with different combinations of levels for each of the criteria. Results for this investigation indicate that, within the parameters of the study, all three criteria are important for understanding Euler diagrams and we have a preliminary indication of the ordering of their importance.

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Bibtex Record

@inproceedings{2571,
author = {Florence Benoy and Peter Rodgers},
title = {{Evaluating the Comprehension of Euler Diagrams}},
month = {July},
year = {2007},
pages = {182-196},
keywords = {determinacy analysis, Craig interpolants},
note = {Typos corrected from published version.},
doi = {},
url = {http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/2007/2571},
    publication_type = {inproceedings},
    submission_id = {1360_1184047381},
    ISBN = {978-0-7695-2900-4},
    booktitle = {11th International Conference on Information Visualization (IV 2007)},
    organization = {IEEE Computer Society},
    publisher = {IEEE},
    ISSN = {1550-6037},
    refereed = {yes},
}

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