Cone Tree

Last revision: 01/15/2008, G. Waloszek

 

Source: George G. Robertson, Jock D. Mackinlay, and Stuart K. Card. Cone Trees: Animated 3D Visualizations of Hierarchical Information

 

Purpose

The Cone Tree is an attempt to fit a wide tree into a conventional display. This is accomplished by arranging all nodes at a level in a circular fashion. Thus, each level forms a cone. The 2D projection of such a tree is called a Cone Tree. When a node is selected, it moves to the front in a smooth animation taking about one second. This helps users to preserve the context during a transition between two views.

From original article: The Cone Tree is used for visualizing hierarchical information structures. The hierarchy is presented in 3D to maximize effective use of available screen space and enable visualization of the whole structure. Interactive animation is used to shift some of the user’s cognitive load to the human perceptual system.

Applications

Display of large tree structures

Authors

George G. Robertson, Jock D. Mackinlay, and Stuart K. Card (Xerox Parc)

Links