Visual encodings of a purchase flow (A), influential power streams (B and C), and an influence bar chart (D) in the flow view.

... flow. Two analysis modes (group and product modes) are supported by purchase flow. The purchase behavior of each group is visualized as a gray flow (Fig. 3(A)), which is drawn in a vertically symmetrical manner. The width of a flow is proportional to the average purchase value. The flows can illustrate the temporal purchases of different groups of players ( Fig. 2(H)) and that of different categories of products (Fig. 7) in the group mode and the product mode, respectively. For space ...

... power streams. As shown in Fig. 3, three colored streams, which represent the three social interaction mechanisms, namely, direct communication, triadic closure, and social influence, are uniformly overlaid on each purchase flow in a consistent order. For presenting users with abstractions with meaning, we replaced triadic closure with shared partners used for the ...

... flow in a consistent order. For presenting users with abstractions with meaning, we replaced triadic closure with shared partners used for the legend on the top of the flow view (to the left of Fig. 2(I)). The thickness of a stream at a certain timeframe is proportional to the degree of influential power of the associated mechanism at that time (Fig. 3(B)). The degree of influential power is estimated by the measure described in Section 4.3. The three streams are stacked to show the joint degree of influential power of the ...

... the group mode, the design allows analysts to compare the social influences of different groups of players on product purchase over time. We use stippling to encode the normalized values of the three social interaction variables (Fig. 3 (C)) which are computed by the measures described in the last paragraph of Section 4.1. Denser dots indicate higher values of the variables. Stippling is a specific type of texture and its density channel can be separated effectively from the size (thickness) channel (Ware, 2012;Munzner, 2014). Thus, users can simultaneously perceive the ...

... bar charts. The influential power of a social interaction mechanism produced by eight groups of players is visualized through a bar chart (T4), as shown in Fig. 3(D). The associated chart can be displayed by clicking a stream on the flow. Bar charts, instead of pie charts, are used because proportion and absolute value information are important for analysis. Analysts do not only wish to see the proportion at a particular timeframe but also intend to compare the absolute values at different ...

... and absolute value information are important for analysis. Analysts do not only wish to see the proportion at a particular timeframe but also intend to compare the absolute values at different timeframes. The bars placed at the left and right sides of a baseline represent the sophisticated players and general players of the four cliques (see Fig. 3(D)). The length of a bar indicates the degree of influential power of a specific social interaction mechanism contributed by a specific group of ...