Drawing principles, or aesthetics, are important in graph drawing. They are used as criteria for algorithm design and for quality evaluation. Current aesthetics are described as visual properties that a drawing is required to have to be visually pleasing. However, most of these aesthetics are originally proposed without consideration of graph structure information. Therefore their ability in visually revealing graph structural features are not guaranteed and indeed mixed results have been reported in the literature regarding their impact on user graph comprehension. In this paper, we propose to derive aesthetics based on graph internal structural features. Further, graphs are often evaluated based on controlled experiments with simple perception tasks to avoid possible confounding factors caused by complex tasks. This leaves their value in supporting complex tasks unevaluated. To fill this gap, we also discuss the possibility of applying evaluation methodologies used in the Cognitive Load Theory research for graph evaluation.

Item Type:	Refereed Conference Paper
Keywords:	graph drawing, evaluation, aesthetics
Research Division:	Information and Computing Sciences
Research Group:	Information Systems
Research Field:	Computer-Human Interaction
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding Knowledge in the Information and Computing Sciences
UTAS Author:	Huang, W (Dr Tony Huang)
ID Code:	98255
Year Published:	2014
Deposited By:	Information and Communication Technology
Deposited On:	2015-02-08
Last Modified:	2017-11-13
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