Abstract:
Applications supporting navigation in large networks are used every
days by millions of people. They include road map navigators, flight
route visualization systems, and network visualization systems using
node-link diagrams. These applications currently provide generic
interaction methods for navigation: pan-and-zoom and sometimes bird's
eye views.

This article explores the idea of exploiting the connection
information provided by the network to help navigate these large
spaces. We visually augment two traditional navigation methods, and
develop two special-purpose techniques. The first new technique,
called "Link Sliding", provides guided panning when continuously
dragging along a visible link. The second technique, called "Bring &
Go", brings adjacent nodes nearby when pointing to a node. We compare
the performance of these techniques in both an adjacency exploration
task and a node revisiting task. This comparison illustrates the
various advantages of content-aware network navigation techniques. A
significant speed advantage is found for the Bring & Go technique over
other methods.

Videos showing these techniques available at
http://zvtm.sourceforge.net/zgrviewer/video/videos.html
Would be really cool to have them in GUESS too...