Visualizing Information Evolution

In this paper, we propose a novel graph representation, Railway Visualization, to reveal the information evolution with temporal relationship over time. Through Railway Visualization, it cannot only reveal the changes of an entity’s intra-state over time, but also can effectively disclose the intrinsic characteristics of the complicated relationship evolution, such as branching, crossing, splitting, converging and parallelism. Using the railway route map in people’s daily life as the metaphor to visualize the information evolution can leverage people’s existing knowledge and mental models to quickly interpret the graph and gain the insight. We then conclude the drawing aesthetic rules by observing the railway route maps and formulate them as the energy terms. By solving them through a two-steps optimization method, the railway-route-map-style layout can be rendered automatically. Furthermore, an interactive level-of-detail mechanism is also provided. Finally, several types of data, including movies, photo albums, news, and co-author network are visualized to prove the virtues of the Railway Visualization.