Visual Analysis of Temporal Trends in Social Networks Using Edge Color Coding and Metric Timelines

Abstract

We present Net EvViz, a visualization tool for analysis and exploration of a dynamic social network. There are plenty of visual social network analysis tools but few provide features for visualization of dynamically changing networks featuring the addition or deletion of nodes or edges. Our tool extends the code base of the Node XL template for Microsoft Excel, a popular network visualization tool. The key features of this work are (1) The ability of the user to specify and edit temporal annotations to the network components in an Excel sheet, (2) See the dynamics of the network with multiple graph metrics plotted over the time span of the graph, called the Timeline, and (3) Temporal exploration of the network layout using an edge coloring scheme and a dynamic Time slider. The objectives of the new features presented in this paper are to let the data analysts, computer scientists and others to observe the dynamics or evolution in a network interactively. We presented Net EvViz to five users of Node XL and received positive responses.