Social networks are the fabric of society and the subject of frequent visual analysis. Closed triads represent triangular relationships between three people in a social network and are significant for understanding inherent interconnections and influence within the network. The most common methods for representing social networks (node-link diagrams and adjacency matrices) are not optimal for understanding triangles. We propose extending the adjacency matrix form to 3D for better visualization of network triads. We design a 3D matrix reordering technique and implement an immersive interactive system to assist in visualizing and analyzing closed triads in social networks. A user study and usage scenarios demonstrate that our method provides substantial added value over node-link diagrams in improving the efficiency and accuracy of manipulating and understanding the social network triads.

翻译：社交网络构成了社会的结构，并常被视为可视化分析的议题。闭合三元组代表社交网络中三人之间的三角关系，对于理解网络内部固有互联性与影响力具有重要意义。目前表示社交网络最常用的方法（节点-链接图与邻接矩阵）在展示三角关系方面并非最优。我们提出将邻接矩阵形式扩展至三维空间，以更好地可视化网络三元组。为此，我们设计了一种三维矩阵重排序技术，并实现了一套沉浸式交互系统，用于辅助社交网络中闭合三元组的可视化与分析。用户研究与使用场景表明，与节点-链接图相比，我们的方法在提升操作与理解社交网络三元组的效率与准确性方面具有显著附加价值。