  We have compared three common visualisations for hierarchical quantitative
data, treemaps, icicle plots and sunburst charts as well as a semicircular
variant of sunburst charts we call the sundown chart. In a pilot study, we
found that the sunburst chart was least preferred. In a controlled study with
12 participants, we compared treemaps, icicle plots and sundown charts. Treemap
was the least preferred and had a slower performance on a basic navigation task
and slower performance and accuracy in hierarchy understanding tasks. The
icicle plot and sundown chart had similar performance with slight user
preference for the icicle plot.
