Sunburst

Description

The SunBurst technique is an alternative, space-filling visualization that uses a radial rather than a rectangular layout. In SunBurst, items in a hierarchy are laid out radially, with the top of the hierarchy at the center and deeper leves farther away from the center. The angle swept out by an item and its color correspond to some atttribute of the data. For instance, in a visualization of a file system, the angle may correspond to the file/directory size and the color may correspond to the file type. An example Sunburst display is shown below.

References

An Evaluation of Space-Filling Information Visualizations for Depicting Hierarchical Structures (IJHCS '00) Focus+Context Display and Navigation Techniques for Enhancing Radial, Space-Filling Hierarchy Visualizations (InfoVis '00) An Evaluation of Space-Filling Information Visualizations for Depicting Hierarchical Structures (GVU Tech Report 00-12)