Regular Spatial Separation for Exploratory Visualization

There are many well-used techniques in exploratory visualization that select, filter or highlight particular aspects of the visualization to gain a better understanding of the structure and makeup of the underlying information. Indeed, distortion techniques have been developed that deform and move different spatial elements of the representation allowing the user to view and investigate internal aspects of the visualization. But this distortion may cause the user to misunderstand the spatial structure and context of surrounding information and works better when the user knows what feature they are looking for. We believe that regular separation techniques, that separate and generate space round features or objects of interest clarifies the visual representations, are underused and that their use should be encouraged. We describe related research and literature, present some new methods, and classify the realizations by what type of separation is used and what information is being separated.