Immersive dynamic visualization of interactions in a social network

Abstract

This paper is focused on the visualization of dynamic social networks, i.e. graphs whose edges model social relationships which evolve during time. In order to overcome the problem of discontinuities of the graphical representations computed by discrete methods, the proposed approach is a continuous one which updates the changes as soon as they happen in the visual restitution. The vast majority of the continuous approaches are restricted to 2D supports which do not optimally match the human perception capabilities. We here present TempoSpring which is a new interactive 3D visualization tool of dynamic graphs. This innovative tool relies on a force-directed layout method to span the 3D space along with several immersive setups (active stereoscopic system/visualization in a dome) to offer an efficient user-experience. TempoSpring has initially been developed in a particular application context: the analysis of sociability networks in the French medieval peasant society. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.