Interactive visualization of heterogeneous social networks using glyphs

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1276336 (Table of Contents)

There is a growing need for visualizing heterogeneous social networks as new data sets become available. However, the existing visualization tools do not address the challenge of reading topological information introduced by heterogeneous node and link types. To resolve this issue, we introduce glyphs to node-link diagrams to conveniently represent the multivariate nature of heterogeneous node and link types. This provides the opportunity to visually reorganize topological information of the heterogeneous social networks without losing connectivity information. Moreover, a set of interaction techniques are provided to the analyst to give total control over the reorganization process. Finally, a case study is presented to using InfoVis 2008 data set to show the exploration process.