Get Your Directories Right: From Hierarchy Visualization to Hierarchy Manipulation

Visual comparison of hierarchies such as directory structures is often considered a passive analysis task. Thus, insights gained from the visualization need to be recorded and applied afterwards. In contrast in this paper, we propose and explore an active visual analytics approach focusing on the manipulation of directory structures in the context of comparison. Two directories including subdirectories and files are presented side by side while links between the two representations connect matching files. Embedded into an elaborate interaction concept, drag-and-drop operations allow the users for interactively modifying the directories. We explored different application scenarios of the approach in a qualitative user study.