Sketching Euler Diagrams

The proposed research will develop the first techniques for recognizing sketches of Euler diagrams drawn by users. The proposal is for Dr Plimmer to travel to the UK team for 1 month as a Visiting Researcher and for Dr Stapleton to travel to New Zealand for one week. The research visits will facilitate the exchange of knowledge between experts in automated Euler diagram drawing (the UK team) and sketch recognition (Dr Plimmer, Auckland, NZ). This will allow an important exchange of information about relevant drawing and sketching techniques and result in further, significant, collaboration.A natural creation method for Euler diagrams is using a pen but no intelligent tool support exists for this mode of entry. Euler diagrams are a popular and frequently used visualization technique; in part, this popularity serves to motivate our selection of them for the proposed research, since the results are likely to have significant impact. Moreover, Euler diagrams form the basis of more expressive notations, built by augmenting them with graphs or arrows (or both), for instance. Example notations include spider diagrams, Euler/Venn diagrams, Venn-II diagrams, constraint diagrams, and ontology diagrams. The research results of the project provide a basis for developing sketch recognition tools for these more expressive notations. Extending the research results to these notations will be the subject of the future collaborations, between Dr Plimmer and the UK team, that will build on this project.

The project will develop original techniques that allow the sketch recognition and post-processing of Euler diagrams. The results will have impact in areas where one wishes to visualize relationships between sets of data. This is because the results will enable the automatic production of high-fidelity Euler diagrams from user sketches, which is not currently possible. Consequently, this will bring benefits by improving the communication of information for the public in general, including in a business context. In turn, this will lead to economic benefits through improved understanding and communication of information. Euler diagrams are useful information visualization tools, having uses in a variety of areas. This project will impact the ability of users to convey, visually, information about related sets of data and, so, enhance user understanding. This is because, at present, Euler diagrams must typically be drawn on paper (which results in low-fidelity diagrams that cannot be used in intelligent computer applications) or using diagram editing tools (which is time consuming and detracts from the cognitive processes one follows in order to produce the most effective diagram). Impact will be realised through a variety of dissemination activities, including published articles and freely available sketching software. In an industrial context, we will closely collaborate with our Project Partner, Nokia, who are keen to take up the results of the project.