ArcTrees: Visualizing Relations in Hierarchical Data

In this paper we present, ARCTREES, a novel way of visualizing hierarchical and non-hierarchical relations within one interactive visualization. Such a visualization is challenging because it must display hierarchical information in a way that the user can keep his or her mental map of the data set and include relational information without causing misinterpretation. We propose a hierarchical view derived from traditional Treemaps and augment this view with an arc diagram to depict relations. In addition, we present interaction methods that allow the exploration of the data set using Focus+Context techniques for navigation. The development was motivated by a need for understanding relations in structured documents but it is also useful in many other application domains such as project management and calendars.