Design Guidelines for Agent Based Model Visualization

Design Guidelines for Agent Based Model Visualization
12.8
12.9
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/12/2/1.html
Figure 19. Foreground enhancement of Series Circuit Model
Changing the background conductor's color to similar shades of brown lowers the background's
contrast and intensity. Additionally, the reduced electron size allows the viewer to perceive them as a
distribution of dots rather than overlapping circles. Independently, notice that electrons are again
perceived as black rings on the far right red background. Thus, the dual representation we wanted to
avoid initially, of the electrons as rings, is still taking place.
Figure 20. Foreground enhancement of Series Circuit Model
We changed the electron's color to orange to avoid this dual representation in Figure 20. However,
this change did not prove useful; the orange hue is still too close to red. Notice how visible electrons
are over the blue background (blue and orange are complementary) while the single electron at the
bottom of the red background is virtually invisible. Moreover, the wire's brown hue is distracting;
while the brown hue has the necessary contrast and intensity properties, its color does not convey any
meaning and is unnecessary.
Figure 21. Final design of Series Circuit Model
12.10
In this final visualization we simplified the design in Figure 21 by using two shades of gray for the
conductors. The electrons have a dark red to distinguish them from the background. And we placed
labels over the terminals to make their charge explicit.
12.11
Other changes were made to improve movement, however they can only be perceived in an
animation. For example the motion of the electrons was jerky due to temporal aliasing. The
discontinuous motion of electrons through the wire was difficult to track visually since the electrons
moved with relatively large steps. In order to make the electrons easier to follow, the step that
electrons took between frames was decreased to render the movement more smooth and continuous.
(i.e. temporal anti-aliasing).
13.1
Conclusion
11/20/09 3:30 PM
Page 27 of 32