Visualizing Node-Link Graphs

An essay on how to make graphs easier to understand. Topics include creating a visual graph language as well as utilizing the third spatial dimension, all with plenty of pretty pictures.

1.0 — Introduction

During Claude Shannon’s tenure at Bell Labs (a research arm of what we now call AT&T, responsible for things like the transistor, Unix, and the cell phone), the Bell Labs patent lawyers tried to figure out why some people were awarded more patents than others. After much consternation and head scratching, the patent lawyers “discerned only one common thread: Workers with the most patents often shared lunch or breakfast with a Bell Labs electrical engineer named Harry Nyquist. It wasn’t the case that Nyquist gave them specific ideas. Rather, as one scientist recalled, ‘he drew people out, got them thinking.’” [1]

In today’s world, it is in every company’s self-interest to know if they have any Harry Nyquists on staff. The moment a company identifies one, the individual in question would no doubt get a raise and be tasked with exclusively talking with other inventors and engineers. Given the size and complexity modern companies, though, it is doubtful that a few lawyers could solve the problem.

One way a complex company could try to identify its Nyquists, so to speak, would be to visualize internal collaborative relationships via node-link graphs.

The only problem is that node-link collaboration graphs are often too complex to understand. For…