Papers accepted for VINCI 2021

Three submissions are accepted for publication at the 14th International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction (VINCI 2021).

VINCI is the premier international forum for researchers and industrial practitioners to discuss the state of the art in visual communication theories, designs, and applications. The 14th International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction (VINCI '21) will be held during 6–7 September 2021, in Potsdam, Germany. Accepted papers will be published in the ACM ICPS series.

The following submissions will be presented at the symposium:

• Daniel Limberger, Willy Scheibel, Jan van Dieken, and Jürgen Döllner: "Visualization of Data Changes in 2.5D Treemaps using Procedural Textures and Animated Transitions"
• Martin Büßemeyer, Daniel Limberger, Willy Scheibel, and Jürgen Döllner: "Interactive Simulation and Visualization of Long-Term, ETF-based Investment Strategies"
• Daniel Atzberger, Willy Scheibel, Daniel Limberger, and Jürgen Döllner: "Software Galaxies: Displaying Coding Activities using a Galaxy Metaphor"

This work investigates the extent to which animated procedural texture patterns can be used to support the representation of changes in 2.5D treemaps. Changes in height, color, and area of individual nodes can easily be visualized using animated transitions. Especially for changes in the color attribute, plain animated transitions are not able to directly communicate the direction of change itself. We show how procedural texture patterns can be superimposed to the color mapping and support transitions. To this end, we discuss qualitative properties of each pattern, demonstrate their ability to communicate change direction both with and without animation, and conclude which of the patterns are more likely to increase effectiveness and correctness of the change mapping in 2.5D treemaps.

Personal, long-term investment products, especially ones for retirement savings, require thorough understanding to use them profitably. Even simple savings plans based on exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are subject to many variables and uncertainties to be considered for expected and planned-upon returns. We present an interactive simulation of an ETF-based savings plan that combines forecasts, risk awareness, taxes and costs, inflation, and dynamic inflows and outflows into a single visualization. The visualization consists of four parts: a form-fill interface for configuration, a savings and payout simulation, a cash flow chart, and a savings chart. Based on a specific use case, we discuss how private investors can benefit from using our visualization after a short training period.

Software visualization uses metaphors to depict software and software development data that usually has no gestalt. The choice of a metaphor and visual depiction is researched broadly, but deriving a layout based on similarity is still challenging. We present a novel approach to 3D software visualization called Software Galaxy. Our layout is based on applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation on source code. We utilize a metaphor inspired from astronomy for depicting software metrics for single files and clusters. Our first experiments indicate that a 3D visualization capturing semantic relatedness can be beneficial for standard program comprehension tasks.