Applying a Sunburst Visualization to Summarize User Navigation Sequences

For many Web-based applications, it´s important to be able to analyze the paths users have taken through a site--for example, to understand how they´re discovering engaging content. These paths are difficult to summarize visually because of the underlying data´s complexity. A Google researcher applied a sunburst visualization to this problem, after simplifying the data into a hierarchical format. The resulting visualization was successful in YouTube and is widely referenced and accessed. The code for the visualization is available as open source.