Browsing by Author "Wu, Hsiang-Yun"

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    Shape-Guided Mixed Metro Map Layout
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2022) Batik, Tobias; Terziadis, Soeren; Wang, Yu-Shuen; Nöllenburg, Martin; Wu, Hsiang-Yun; Umetani, Nobuyuki; Wojtan, Chris; Vouga, Etienne
    Metro or transit maps, are schematic representations of transit networks to facilitate effective route-finding. These maps are often advertised on a web page or pamphlet highlighting routes from source to destination stations. To visually support such route-finding, designers often distort the layout by embedding symbolic shapes (e.g., circular routes) in order to guide readers' attention (e.g., Moscow map and Japan railway map). However, manually producing such maps is labor-intensive and the effect of shapes remains unclear. In this paper, we propose an approach to generalize such mixed metro maps that take user-defined shapes as an input. In this mixed design, lines that are used to approximate the shapes are arranged symbolically, while the remaining lines follow classical layout convention. A three-step algorithm, including (1) detecting and selecting routes for shape approximation, (2) shape and layout deformation, and (3) aligning lines on a grid, is integrated to guarantee good visual quality. Our contribution lies in the definition of the mixed metro map problem and the formulation of design criteria so that the problem can be resolved systematically using the optimization paradigm. Finally, we evaluate the performance of our approach and perform a user study to test if the embedded shapes are recognizable or reduce the map quality.
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    A Survey on Transit Map Layout - from Design, Machine, and Human Perspectives
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2020) Wu, Hsiang-Yun; Niedermann, Benjamin; Takahashi, Shigeo; Roberts, Maxwell J.; Nöllenburg, Martin; Smit, Noeska and Oeltze-Jafra, Steffen and Wang, Bei
    Transit maps are designed to present information for using public transportation systems, such as urban railways. Creating a transit map is a time-consuming process, which requires iterative information selection, layout design, and usability validation, and thus maps cannot easily be customised or updated frequently. To improve this, scientists investigate fully- or semi-automatic techniques in order to produce high quality transit maps using computers and further examine their corresponding usability. Nonetheless, the quality gap between manually-drawn maps and machine-generated maps is still large. To elaborate the current research status, this state-of-the-art report provides an overview of the transit map generation process, primarily from Design, Machine, and Human perspectives. A systematic categorisation is introduced to describe the design pipeline, and an extensive analysis of perspectives is conducted to support the proposed taxonomy. We conclude this survey with a discussion on the current research status, open challenges, and future directions.