Social networks are constantly changing. They evolve through time and they support many different viewpoints, based on the relations or the viewers perspective. Helping the viewer understand the changes that are taking place is an important job for visualization. One can use animation to draw the viewer's eye to actors in flux by allowing them to move in the diagram to reflect their changing relationships. It is harder, though, to draw attention to the particular relations that are appearing, disappearing or changing in their nature or intensity.
In this applet, we explore different ways to draw attention to the changing relations. A network of individuals is seen continuously changing between two fixed states, but each time the changes are shown in a different way. Sometimes new links appear simultaneously, and sometimes their appearance is spread out over the time of the transition. Sometimes the lines gradually become more visible, sometimes they wiggle and sometimes they slowly extend to draw your eye to the moving arrowhead.
You may find that you notice different things about the change in the network as you see it displayed in different ways. Some techniques make it easier to see who is changing the most in one display, others make it easier to see links that are reversed, or the general pattern of the change.
The applet is an implementation of
KrackPlot.
An earlier version of this applet is used in the on-line article
Do you see what I want you to see? The effects of motion and spatial
layout on viewer's perception of graphical structures,
Cathleen McGrath and Jim Blythe
Journal of Social Structure,
vol 5, number 2.
The two versions of the graph are explained there too.
Cathleen McGrath's and Jim Blythe's bios.