The Network Lens: Interactive Exploration of Multivariate Networks Using Visual Filtering

Abstract

Networks are widely used in modeling relational data often comprised of thousands of nodes and edges. This kind of data alone implies a challenge for its visualization as it is hard to avoid clutter of network elements if using traditional node-link diagrams. Moreover, real-life network data sets usually represent objects with a large number of additional attributes that need to be visualized, such as in software engineering, social network analysis, or biochemistry. In this paper, we present a novel approach, called Network Lens, to visualize such attributes in context of the underlying network. Our implementation of the Network Lens is an interactive tool that extends the idea of so-called magic lenses in such a way that users can interactively build and combine various lenses by specifying different attributes and selecting suitable visual representations.