Cascading curtainmap: an interactive visualization for depicting large and flexible hierarchies

In visualizing information hierarchies, icicle plots are efficient diagrams in that they provide the user a straightforward layout for different levels of data in a hierarchy and enable the user to compare items based on the item width. However, as the size of the hierarchy grows large, the items in an icicle plot end up being small and indistinguishable. In this thesis, by maintaining the positive characteristics of traditional

icicle plots and incorporating new features such as dynamic diagram and active layer, we developed an interactive visualization that allows the user to selectively drill down or roll up to review different levels of data in a large hierarchy, to change the hierarchical

structure to detect potential patterns, and to maintain an overall understanding of the

current hierarchical structure.