Visualizing Uncertainty of Edge Attributes in Node-Link Diagrams

摘要

In this paper, we discuss and evaluate the handling of uncertainty in visual network analysis, i.e. the uncertainty of edge attributes. This can be useful to answer a question like ”How reliable is a flow rate value on a specific edge/pipeline?”. For investigating the most suitable and most intuitive representation of uncertain edge attributes in visual network analysis, we extend the state of the art in uncertain edge visualization. We present and compare four different approaches in a large user study to gain insight into effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction. In our user study, we show that dashed lines are the most promising method in general. But, depending on the task, wavy lines as well as blurred lines can be a better choice in terms of efficiency.