Revisited Experimental Comparison of Node-Link and Matrix Representations
This work provides empirical evidence to help practitioners in fields like biology, engineering, and social sciences choose appropriate network visualization methods, though it is incremental as it builds on existing comparison research.
The researchers conducted a large-scale online study comparing the effectiveness of node-link diagrams and adjacency matrices for visualizing network data, revealing statistically significant differences between the two techniques across a broad spectrum of network tasks.
Visualizing network data is applicable in domains such as biology, engineering, and social sciences. We report the results of a study comparing the effectiveness of the two primary techniques for showing network data: node-link diagrams and adjacency matrices. Specifically, an evaluation with a large number of online participants revealed statistically significant differences between the two visualizations. Our work adds to existing research in several ways. First, we explore a broad spectrum of network tasks, many of which had not been previously evaluated. Second, our study uses a large dataset, typical of many real-life networks not explored by previous studies. Third, we leverage crowdsourcing to evaluate many tasks with many participants.