Towards Faithful Graph Visualizations

Abstract: Readability criteria have been addressed as a measurement of the quality of graph visualizations. In this paper, we argue that readability criteria are necessary but not sufficient. We propose a new kind of criteria, namely faithfulness, to evaluate the quality of graph layouts. We introduce a general model for quantify faithfulness, and contrast it with the well established readability criteria. We show examples of common visualization techniques, such as multidimensional scaling, edge bundling and several other visualization metaphors for the study of faithfulness.