Using Animation to Alleviate Overdraw in Multiclass Scatterplot Matrices

The scatterplot matrix (SPLOM) is a commonly used technique for visualizing multiclass multivariate data. However, multiclass SPLOMs have issues with overdraw (overlapping points), and most existing techniques for alleviating overdraw focus on individual scatterplots with a single class. This paper explores whether animation using flickering points is an effective way to alleviate overdraw in these multiclass SPLOMs. In a user study with 69 participants, we found that users not only performed better at identifying dense regions using animated SPLOMs, but also found them easier to interpret and preferred them to static SPLOMs. These results open up new directions for future work on alleviating overdraw for multiclass SPLOMs, and provide insights for applying animation to alleviate overdraw in other settings.