Distortion for readability of contextualized text explanations for visualizations

Dual-Use of Image Space (DUIS) is a new technique for presenting text explanations for images within image space. This, however presents the problem of readability of the text since readers are used to reading from rectangular windows, on the other hand, a graphical object will typically have a silhouette of an irregular shape. To improve the readability we have developed a technique called rectangularization, i.e. on users´ request the selected object morphs into a rectangular window. In order to preserve the context for the rectangularized object, as the selected object morphs into a rectangle, the other objects in the scene also change shape to create room for the newly created rectangle. On top of discussing the rectangularization concept, this paper discusses the algorithm used to displace the other objects in the scene. We also show the extension of the algorithms to allow for multiple rectangularization.