Rainbow boxes: A new technique for overlapping set visualization and two applications in the biomedical domain

In this paper, we present rainbow boxes, a novel technique for visualizing overlapping sets, and its application to the presentation of the properties of amino-acids, the comparison of drug properties, and the visualization of gene annotation. This technique requires solving a combinatorial optimization problem; we propose a specific heuristic and we evaluate and compare it to general optimization algorithms. We also describe a user study comparing rainbow boxes to tables and showing that the former allowed physicians to find information significantly faster. Finally, we discuss the limits and the perspectives of rainbow boxes.