Factors Influencing Visual Comparison of Colored Directed Acyclic Graphs

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive investigation of the factors that influence visual comparison in colored node-link diagrams. We conducted a user study in which participants were asked to identify differences in pairs of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) under time constraints. Previous studies focused on the perception of differences in node-link diagrams without coloring. Our results show that the individual coloring of nodes and edges significantly affects the detection of differences. We were able to confirm previous results, such as the influence of graph density, and also found that uniform coloring in certain areas of the graphs plays an important role in finding differences. Consequently, the results of this study hold potential for developing better comparative visualizations for diverse applications, such as finance or biology.