Visualising Bluetooth interactions: combining the Arc Diagram and DocuBurst techniques

Abstract

Within the Bluetooth mobile space, overwhelmingly large sets of interaction and encounter data can very quickly be accumulated. This presents a challenge to gaining an understanding and overview of the dataset as a whole. In order to overcome this problem, we have designed a visualisation which provides an informative overview of the dataset. The visualisation combines existing Arc Diagram and DocuBurst techniques into a radial space-filling layout capable of conveying a rich understanding of Bluetooth interaction data, and clearly represents social networks and relationships established among encountered devices. The end result enables a user to visually interpret the relative importance of individual devices encountered, the relationships established between them and the usage of Bluetooth 'friendly names' (or device labels) within the data.