MENA: Visual Analysis of Multivariate Egocentric Network Evolution

Ego-network is built with a specific individual, i.e., the ego, and individuals connected to it, i.e., alter. As an abstraction of connection between individual and outside world, it usually has multiple attributions and has been applied to many research fields. Multivariate ego-network evolution assists users analyzing individual characteristic and hidden pattern in the network. However, most of current studies suffer from limited analysis levels and restricted network evolution analysis techniques. In this paper, we propose MENA, a visual analysis system to display, explore and analyze multivariate ego-network evolution. MENA allows users to analyze ego-network at global, subgroup and node/link level. Besides, automatic analysis and timeline are integrated in our approach to achieve evolution analysis automatically and freely. Furthermore, we evaluate MENA with academic collaboration network, which demonstrates the usefulness and effectiveness of our approach.