Clarity and Computational Efficiency of Orbital Boundary Labeling

2026-03-09

AI Summary

This work addresses the spatial inefficiency and visual clutter caused by label placement in circular interfaces—such as smartwatches and automotive dashboards—by introducing an orbital boundary labeling method. Labels are positioned in a ring-shaped region surrounding the graphical content and connected to their corresponding features via non-crossing, shortest-path leader lines, supporting both radial and straight-line styles. The key contribution lies in the first algorithm specifically designed for non-uniform label sizes that guarantees non-crossing, minimal-length leaders through computational geometry-based layout optimization. User studies demonstrate that the straight-line leader variant significantly improves response time while maintaining high recognition accuracy, thereby confirming the method’s advantages in both readability and interactive efficiency.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization

Application Category

• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Humans versus LLMs for data annotation and labeling

Abstract

Circular interfaces such as those found on smartwatches, automotive dashboards, cockpit instruments, or in radial visualizations pose unique challenges for placing readable labels. Traditional rectangular labeling methods waste screen space and create visual clutter on these constrained displays. In orbital boundary labeling, the labels (e.g., the features'names) are placed in an annulus-shaped orbit outside of the figure, and each label is connected to its feature using a short, crossing-free leader line. We contribute algorithms to compute two leader styles, orbital-radial and straight-line, for uniform and non-uniform label sizes, optimizing for crossing-free shortest leaders. We evaluate the model and the algorithms with computational experiments and a controlled user experiment. The user experiment reveals that both leader types exhibit similar accuracy, but straight-line leaders yield faster response times.

Problem

• orbital boundary labeling
• circular interfaces
• label placement
• leader lines
• visual clutter

Innovation

• orbital boundary labeling
• crossing-free leaders
• circular interfaces
• label placement
• computational efficiency