Adjasankey: Visualization of Huge Hierarchical Weighted and Directed Graphs

Visualization of hierarchical weighted and directed graphs are usually done with node-link or adjacency matrix diagrams. However, these representations suffer from various drawbacks: low readability in a context of Big Data, high number of edge crossings, difficulty to efficiently represent the weighting. With the stated goal of reducing these drawbacks, we designed Adjasankey, a hybrid visual representation of weighted and directed graphs using hierarchical abstractions. This technique combines adjacency matrices readability of large graphs and flow diagrams visual design efficiency for weighting depiction. Associated to Big Data computing and light-weight web rendering, our tool allows to depict and interact in real time on huge dataset and supports user multi-scale exploration and analysis. To show the efficiency of Adjasankey, we present a case study on the analysis of a Customer to Customer website.