  Dynamic networks reflect temporal changes occurring to the graph's structure
and are used to model a wide variety of problems in many application fields. We
investigate the design space of dynamic graph visualization along two major
dimensions: the network structural and temporal representation. Significant
research has been conducted evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of different
structural representations for static graphs, however, few extend this
comparison to a dynamic network setting. We conduct a study where we assess the
participants' response times, accuracy, and preferences for different
combinations of the graph's structural and temporal representations on typical
dynamic network exploration tasks, with and without support of common
interaction methods. Our results suggest that matrices provide better support
for tasks on lower-level entities and basic interactions require longer
response times while increasing accuracy. Node-link with auto animation proved
to be the quickest and most accurate combination overall, while animation with
playback control the most preferred temporal encoding.
