Evaluating Graph Drawing Aesthetics: Defining and Exploring a New Empirical Research Area

Abstract

This chapter describes a long-term project that investigates the validity of the design principles — not from the perspective of computational efficiency, but from the perspective of human comprehension — upon which many automatic graph layout algorithms are based. It describes a framework for experimentation in this area, the overall methodology used throughout, as well as the details of the experiments themselves. It shows the development of the empirical ideas and methods as the project matured and provides reflections on each experiment, demonstrating the difficulty of initiating a new experimental research area. The chapter suggests how the current results should best be interpreted, as well as ideas for future work in this area.