Two of My Favorite Things
Posted March 12th, 2008 by Clint
So, it’s no secret that I’m a number and visualization geek. I mean you have been here before right? 
Well, I also happen to have a 1st (British!) Edition translation of Homer’s Odyssey by T.E. Shaw . It’s just the most prized of the 4 or so translations I have (not to mention the Odyssey in its original ancient Greek). So, I’m a history geek too (Shhh, don’t tell anyone).
To my delight, I found this combination of visualization and Greek mythology. It’s the genaeology of the Greek Gods in an interactive Network Diagram. Ok, I think it’s a network diagram, but the folks at Spicynodes say it’s a "sophisticated radial mapping technology" - which doesn’t seem to match what I know so maybe it’s a hybrid of some kind or I’m just ignorant.
Here’s a screen grab of the starting point…
It’s definitely fun to explore the Gods’ family tree. There are some quibbles that I could raise - more like constructive criticisms.
I wish that the descriptions at the bottom of the map were highlighted a little more - even if only briefly. I’m not a fan of the navigation wheel that appears on the central node when you roll over it so I’d rather have the bottom navigation be a little more visually important.
Even though it probably has little data value, it’d be a lot more fun if, when you searched for a God (or Goddess), the visualization ‘zoomed’ through the tree to your selection a la Google Earth. Frankly with a little thought into the speed of the zoom and some appropriate pausing, you could probably do a fairly decent job of showing a God’s direct line of descent.
Ok, on the mythology side … Greek mythology is complex and most Gods have at least one genesis story…it’s hard to show that in the visualization so the authors rightly include tidbits of that complexity in the descriptions. BUT, it bothers me that for Aphrodite they list Ouranos (The Sky) as her father. This is technically true as she sprang from the sea foam created when the -uh- remains of his castration were cast out over the sea, but ummm, Zeus did the work so shouldn’t he get at least half credit? (Nitpicky - I know, I know).
I also think that it would be great if the Web Exhibit folks would provide links to additional reading/details on each God/Goddess and ancient Greece in general for folks who stumble upon this (literally) and want to learn more. Hey, I started out on Bulfinch’s Mythology waaaaay back in the day.
What do you think? Is this a good visualization? A good use of visualization tools? What do you love or hate about it? What would you change?
Both images (the screenshot and the Temple of Zeus) are used with permission under creative commons licenses:
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported - Web Exhibit
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic - Feuillu
March 12th, 2008 at 22:21:32
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March 13th, 2008 at 04:00:24
“sophisticated radial mapping technology” = network diagram.
Though that’s a really nicely executed interactive network diagram, no doubt, it’s still a network diagram. Radial layouts typically put all the nodes on a single ring and then draw a mesh of connections between them, so this really doesn’t fit the description at all - this layout better resembles an output of the various physics-inspired graph layout algorithms (esp. Kamada-Kawai).
For my part, I’d rather have the metadata in a panel to the left of the visualization than at the bottom. The way our eyes scan the screen (check any eyetracking results to see the “F” pattern) make the bottom of the screen a poor place for important content, so placing the data panel at the left makes it more likely to catch the eye without interfering with the visualization itself. Also, the interactivity makes good use of fisheye views, but I think it overdoes it - the connections that are more than one link out from the current node practically disappear, so you lose your sense of “location” in the network map. Overall, it’s a very nifty application.
March 13th, 2008 at 07:52:28
Andrea - I was hoping you’d save the day! I was even more confused when I searched on “Radial Mapping” and all I found was either tire references or analytical geometry - definitely not about relationships.
You’re totally correct about left vs. bottom for the description and navigation. I run at such a high resolution that the usual warning sign for me (BTF) never occurs.
As far as the fish eye use goes - is it really overuse of the fish eye or less than optimal color choices? I agree that the nodes which are more than 1 node away tend to get lost, but couldn’t that just as easily be fixed by raising the intensity of their color a little bit?
For those of you wondering about Kamada-Kawai - take a look at this short summary (you might get a certificate error on this site)
March 13th, 2008 at 16:02:34
Well, whether the fisheye is overdone depends on your goals with the map - if you want to be able to maintain some peripheral awareness of where you are (navigation-wise) then 3 links out does not give you much context at all. The way this is configured, you can only “hop” across the network by 2 positions at most, so the exploration options are constrained by the visualization. I think of it like those “choose your own adventure” novels where you’re trying to be exploratory but any choice could quickly lead to a dead-end and you’d have to retrace your steps. By contrast, if you had some sense of the overall scale of the network, you could make more distant (and approximate) hops to cover greater distance - think of the canonical small world networks, which are mostly made up of close local networks with a few long-distance edges thrown in to shrink the diameter of the entire system.
I guess it really depends on your goals. For graph exploration, the view is awfully limited, but for pleasantly browsing a social network of complex familial relations, the restricted view might be preferable. It also depends on scale; the Greek pantheon is voluminous as they go, but limited in scope. A really enormous network (10Ks of nodes) would require different visualization approaches altogether, with more emphasis on zooming and panning to navigate.
But it would definitely be a bit easier on the eyes if there were more contrast with the outermost nodes!
March 13th, 2008 at 19:13:01
Ahhh, so I get it. Being able to see (clearly)and traverse further across the map helps to give context and sense of location within the map.
I think that I might tend to agree but wonder if they decided to limit the visibility because there’s relatively little separation. I think it’s like just 6 hops from Chaos to the heroes/demigods (Herakles, etc.) BTW, as I was browsing down to the outermost level - the visualization starts to break down because they don’t zoom out enough and nodes in the map that are supposed to be displayed end up off screen. Also of note, some of the node labels interfere with your ability to traverse the map effectively.