Cartesian vs. radial - A comparative evaluation of two visualization tools

Abstract

Many recently developed information visualization techniques are radial variants of originally Cartesian visualizations. Almost none of these radial variants have been evaluated with respect to their benefits over their original visualizations. In this work we compare a radial and a Cartesian variant of a visualization tool for sequences of transactions in information hierarchies. The Timeline Trees (TLT) approach uses a Cartesian coordinate system to represent both the hierarchy and the sequence of transactions whereas the TimeRadarTrees (TRT) technique is the radial counterpart which makes use of a radial tree, as well as circle slices and sectors to show the sequence of transactions. For the evaluation we use both quantitative as well as qualitative evaluation methods including eye tracking. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.