Exploring the Relative Importance of Number of Edge Crossings and Size of Crossing Angles: A Quantitative Perspective
Weidong Huang, Mao Lin Huang · eCite Digital Repository (University of Tasmania) · 2011
Recent research has indicated that human graph reading performance can be affected by the size ofcrossing angles. The aesthetic of crossing angles is closely related to another aesthetic factor: edgecrossings. Although the number of edge crossings has been previously identified as the most importantaesthetic, its relative impact on human graph reading, compared to the size of crossing angles, hasnot been investigated. In this paper, we present an exploratory user study investigating the relativeimportance between crossing number and crossing angle. This study also aims to further examine theeffects of crossing number and crossing angle not only on task performance measured as responsetime and accuracy, but also on cognitive load and visualization efficiency. The experimental resultsreinforce the previous findings that the two aesthetics each significantly affect performance of humangraph reading. Further, in terms of the relative importance, the study demonstrates that given the currentsetting of the user study, the number of edge crossings is relatively more important than the size ofcrossing angles. To be more specific, crossing number and crossing angle together explain about 40%of the variance in response time, mental effort and visualization efficiency, with about 83% of theexplained variance being attributed to crossing number. In regard to response accuracy, crossing numberand crossing angle together explain about 14% of the variance, with a slightly larger portion of theexplained variance being attributed to crossing number.