Abstract
On the issue of how to explore the complex relationships of entities in a story, Storyline visualization has proven to be a useful approach. The traditional Storyline visualization technology only applies to a linear continuous story and has the limitation of reflecting the development of the plots in a story. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical plot visualization method called StoryCake to improve this problem. First, according to the story elements, inter-sessions are divided into groups, whereby the layout of the entities will be optimized in individual groups. Then, the hierarchical relationships of entities in polar coordinates can be confirmed. Finally, we use several skills, e.g., interaction, labels and a fan-shaped visualization view, to enable people better understand how story evolves and track the hierarchical relationship more conveniently. Experimental results show that the proposed hierarchical plot visualization method in polar coordinates can reveal discontinuous events and nonlinear stories. The results also show that our algorithm presents the narrative structure and development of the story.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Kosara, R., Mackinlay, J.: Storytelling: the next step for visualization. Computer 46(46), 44–50 (2013)
Liu, S., Wu, Y., Wei, E., et al.: StoryFlow: tracking the evolution of stories. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 19(12), 2436–2445 (2013)
Ogawa, M., Ma, K.L.: Software evolution storylines. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Software Visualization, ACM, pp. 35–42. (2010)
Tanahashi, Y., Ma, K.L.: Design considerations for optimizing storyline visualizations. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 18(12), 2679–2688 (2012)
Thern, R.: Hierarchical-temporal data visualization using a tree-ring metaphor. In: Proceedings of Smart Graphics, 6th International Symposium, SG 2006, Vancouver, Canada, pp. 70–81, 23–25 July 2006
Zhu, Y., Yu, J., Wu, J.: Chro-Ring: a time-oriented visual approach to represent writers history. Vis. Comput. 32(9), 1133–1149 (2016)
Bach, B., Shi, C., Heulot, N., et al.: Time curves: folding time to visualize patterns of temporal evolution in data. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 22(1), 559–568 (2016)
Christian, M.: Film Language: A semiotics of the Cinema. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1974)
Wang, T.D., Plaisant, C., Quinn, A.J., et al.: Aligning temporal data by sentinel events: discovering patterns in electronic health records. In: Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2008, pp. 457–466, Florence, Italy, Apr 2008
Reinders, F., Post, F.H., Spoelder, H.J.W.: Visualization of time-dependent data with feature tracking and event detection. Vis. Comput. 17(1), 55–71 (2001)
Gotz, D., Stavropoulos, H.: Decisionflow: visual analytics for high-dimensional temporal event sequence data. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 20(12), 1783–1792 (2014)
Luo, D., Yang, J., Krstajic, M., et al.: Eventriver: visually exploring text collections with temporal references. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 18(1), 93–105 (2012)
Plaisant, C., Milash, B., Rose, A., et al: LifeLines: visualizing personal histories. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, ACM, pp. 221–227 (1996)
Aigner, W., Miksch, S., Thurnher, B., et al.: PlanningLines: novel glyphs for representing temporal uncertainties and their evaluation. Inf. Vis. 47(3), 457–463 (2005)
Andr, P., Wilson, M.L., Russell, A., et al.: Continuum: designing timelines for hierarchies, relationships and scale. In: Proceedings of Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, pp. 101–110. (2007)
Bade, R., Schlechtweg, S., Miksch, S.: Connecting time-oriented data and information to a coherent interactive visualization. In: Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2004, pp. 65–76, Vienna, Austria, Apr 2004
Lee, T.Y., Jones, C., Chen, B.Y., et al: Visualizing data trend and relation for exploring knowledge. In: Posters Proceedings of the IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium (2010)
Burch, M., Munz, T., Beck, F., et al.: Visualizing work processes in software engineering with developer rivers. In: Proceedings of Software Visualization, IEEE, pp. 116–124. (2015)
Buono, P., Cuzzocrea, A.A.: Collaborative framework for supporting combined visualization of activities across time zones. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems, (2015)
Tobiasz, M., Isenberg, P., Carpendale, S.: Lark: coordinating co-located collaboration with information visualization. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 15(6), 1065–1072 (2009)
Bouali, F., Devaux, S., et al.: Visual mining of time series using a tubular visualization. Vis. Comput. 32(1), 15–30 (2016)
Liang, H., Chang, J., Kazmi, I.K., et al.: Hand gesture-based interactive puppetry system to assist storytelling for children. Vis. Comput. 33(4), 517–531 (2017)
Liu, S., Zhou, M.X., Pan, S., et al.: Interactive, topic-based visual text summarization and analysis. ACM Trans. Intell. Syst. Technol. 3(2), 543–552 (2009)
Wongsuphasawat, K., Gotz, D.: Exploring flow, factors, and outcomes of temporal event sequences with the outflow visualization. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 18(12), 2659–2668 (2012)
Sun, G., Wu, Y., Liu, S., et al.: EvoRiver: visual analysis of topic coopetition on social media. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 20(12), 1753–1762 (2014)
Liu, S., Cui, W., Wu, Y., et al.: A survey on information visualization: recent advances and challenges. Vis. Comput. 30(12), 1373–1393 (2014)
Munroe, R.: Movie narrative charts (2016). http://xkcd.com/657/
Yang, J., Ward, M.O., Rundensteiner, E.A.: InterRing: an interactive tool for visually navigating and manipulating hierarchical structures. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, pp. 77–84. (2002)
Lou, X., Liu, S., Wang, T.: FanLens: a visual toolkit for dynamically exploring the distribution of hierarchical attribute. In: Proceedings of 2008 IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium, IEEE, pp. 151–158. (2008)
Andrews, K., Heidegger, H.: Information slices: visualising and exploring large hierarchies using cascading, semi-circular discs. In: Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization Late Breaking Hot Topics, IEEE, pp. 9–11. (1998)
Yang, J., Ward, M.O., Rundensteiner, E.A.: InterRing: an interactive tool for visually navigating and manipulating hierarchical structures, In: Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 77–84. (2002)
Afzal, S., Maciejewski, R., Jang, Y., et al.: Spatial text visualization using automatic typographic maps. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 18(12), 2556–2564 (2012)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Qiang, L., Bingjie, C. & Haibo, Z. Storytelling by the StoryCake visualization. Vis Comput 33, 1241–1252 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-017-1409-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-017-1409-2