Text-Filled Stacked Area Graphs

Text can add a significant amount of detail and value to an information visualization. In particular, it can integrate more of the data that a visualization is based on, and it can also integrate information that is personally relevant to readers of a visualization. This may influence readers to consider a visualization a detailed enrichment of their personal experience instead of an abstract representation of anonymous numbers. However, the integration of textual detail into a visualization is often very challenging. This work discusses one particular approach to this problem, namely text-filled stacked area graphs; i.e., graphs that feature stacked areas that are filled with small-typed text. Since these graphs allow for computing the text layout automatically, it is possible to include large amounts of textual detail with very little effort. We discuss the most important challenges and some solutions for the design of text-filled stacked area graphs with the help of an exemplary visualization of the genres, publication years, and titles of a database of several thousand PC games.