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International Conference on Theory and Application of Diagrams

Diagrams 2014: Diagrammatic Representation and Inference pp 176–189Cite as

Exploring the Effects of Colouring Graph Diagrams on People of Various Backgrounds

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 8578))

Abstract

Colour is one of the primary aesthetic elements of a visualization. It is often used successfully to encode information such as the importance of a particular part of the diagram or the relationship between two parts. Even so, there are few investigations into the human reading of colour coding on diagrams from the scientific community. In this paper we report on an experiment with graph diagrams comparing a black and white composition with two other colour treatments. We drew our subjects from engineering, art, visual design, physical education, tourism, psychology and social science disciplines. We found that colouring the nodes of interest reduced the time taken to find the shortest path between the two nodes for all subjects. Engineers, tourism and social scientists proved significantly faster with artist/designers just below the overall average speed. From this study, we contribute that adding particular colour treatments to diagrams increases legibility. In addition, preliminary work investigating colour treatments and schemes indicates potential for future gains.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept Computer Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand

    Beryl Plimmer

  2. Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Denmark

    Ann Morrison & Hendrik Knoche

Authors
  1. Beryl Plimmer
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  2. Ann Morrison
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  3. Hendrik Knoche
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Monash University, PO Box 197, 3145, Caulfield East, VIC, Australia

    Tim Dwyer

  2. University of Glasgow, University Avenue, G12 8QQ, Glasgow, UK

    Helen Purchase

  3. University of Brighton, Lewes Road, BN2 4GJ, Brighton, UK

    Aidan Delaney

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Plimmer, B., Morrison, A., Knoche, H. (2014). Exploring the Effects of Colouring Graph Diagrams on People of Various Backgrounds. In: Dwyer, T., Purchase, H., Delaney, A. (eds) Diagrammatic Representation and Inference. Diagrams 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8578. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44043-8_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44043-8_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-44042-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-44043-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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