We have compared three common visualisations for hierarchical quantitative data, treemaps, icicle plots and sunburst charts as well as a semicircular variant of sunburst charts we call the sundown chart. In a pilot study, we found that the sunburst chart was least preferred. In a controlled study with 12 participants, we compared treemaps, icicle plots and sundown charts. Treemap was the least preferred and had a slower performance on a basic navigation task and slower performance and accuracy in hierarchy understanding tasks. The icicle plot and sundown chart had similar performance with slight user preference for the icicle plot.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1908.01277,
title = {Interactive Visualisation of Hierarchical Quantitative Data: An Evaluation},
author = {Linda Woodburn and Yalong Yang and Kim Marriott},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.01277},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
Presented at IEEE VIS 2019 in Vancouver, Canada and included in the VIS 2019 conference proceedings. Improved the image quality in the paper