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Applying a Sunburst Visualization to Summarize User Navigation Sequences

Kerry Rodden
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 34 (2014), pp. 36-40

Abstract

For many Web-based applications, it's important to be able to analyze the paths users have taken through a site--for example, to understand how they're discovering engaging content. These paths are difficult to summarize visually because of the underlying data's complexity. A Google researcher applied a sunburst visualization to this problem, after simplifying the data into a hierarchical format. The resulting visualization was successful in YouTube and is widely referenced and accessed. The code for the visualization is available as open source.