A Generic Framework and Library for Exploration of Small Multiples through Interactive Piling
This provides a tool for designers and analysts to improve inspection and comparison tasks in visual analytics, though it is incremental as it builds on existing piling metaphors.
The authors tackled the challenge of handling large numbers of small multiples in visual analytics by developing a generic framework and library called Piling.js, which enables interactive organization and exploration through piling interfaces, demonstrated across domains like machine learning and genomics.
Small multiples are miniature representations of visual information used generically across many domains. Handling large numbers of small multiples imposes challenges on many analytic tasks like inspection, comparison, navigation, or annotation. To address these challenges, we developed a framework and implemented a library called Piling.js for designing interactive piling interfaces. Based on the piling metaphor, such interfaces afford flexible organization, exploration, and comparison of large numbers of small multiples by interactively aggregating visual objects into piles. Based on a systematic analysis of previous work, we present a structured design space to guide the design of visual piling interfaces. To enable designers to efficiently build their own visual piling interfaces, Piling.js provides a declarative interface to avoid having to write low-level code and implements common aspects of the design space. An accompanying GUI additionally supports the dynamic configuration of the piling interface. We demonstrate the expressiveness of Piling.js with examples from machine learning, immunofluorescence microscopy, genomics, and public health.