Tech Report HCIL-98-09

Fekete, J., Plaisant, C. (1998)
Excentric Labeling: Dynamic Neighborhood Labeling for Data Visualization
Proceedings of CHI'99, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, May 15-20, 1999, ACM, New York, 512-519.
HCIL-98-09, CS-TR-3946, UMIACS-TR-98-59

The widespread use of information visualization is hampered by the lack of effective labeling techniques. A taxonomy of labeling methods is proposed. We then describe "excentric labeling", a new dynamic technique to label a neighborhood of objects located around the cursor. This technique does not intrude into the existing interaction, it is not computationally intensive, and was easily applied to several visualization applications. A pilot study indicates a strong speed benefit for tasks that involve the rapid exploration of large numbers of objects.