2026-07-23T20:07:21Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:25024 2026-02-09T07:53:46Z ddc:004 open_access

Stress in Graph Drawings: Perception, Preference, and Performance Mooney, Gavin J. Miller, Jacob Wybrow, Michael Kobourov, Stephen Purchase, Helen C. Graph Drawing Graph Drawing Metrics Stress Visual Perception User Study Stress in a graph drawing has been a popular layout principle for more than two decades. Low stress drawings exhibit the property that the geometric distances between all pairs of nodes correlate with the shortest paths between them. The assumption has always been that low stress drawings are "nicer" and better support human perception and comprehension than high stress drawings. In this paper, we put these assumptions to the test. We use a normalised scale-independent and rotation-independent metric for stress; this is necessary to ensure strict controls on our experimental stimuli. We report on three experiments, exploring human perception of stress, preference for stress, and the effect of stress on a graph performance task. We conclude that people can see stress in a graph drawing, that they prefer low stress drawings, and that their performance in a shortest path task improves as stress decreases - thus empirically confirming long-standing assumptions. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Gavin J. Mooney and Jacob Miller and Michael Wybrow and Stephen Kobourov and Helen C. Purchase 2025 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 357, 33rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2025) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.38 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-250240 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.38 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode