Rainbow boxes: a technique for visualizing overlapping sets and an application to the comparison of drugs properties

Overlapping set visualization is a well-known problem in information visualization. This problem considers elements and sets containing all or part of the elements, a given element possibly belonging to more than one set. A typical example is the properties of the 20 amino-acids. A more complex application is the visual comparison of the contraindications or the adverse effects of several similar drugs. The knowledge involved is voluminous, each drug has many contraindications and adverse effects, some of them are shared with other drugs. In this paper, we present rainbow boxes, a novel technique for visualizing overlapping sets, and its application to the properties of amino-acids and to the comparison of drug properties. We also describe a user study comparing rainbow boxes to tables and showing that the former allowed physicians to find information significantly faster. We finally discuss the limits and the perspectives of rainbow boxes.