Animation
This animation demonstrates how Huffman Coding builds a binary tree from symbol frequencies and generates optimal prefix codes.
What Is Huffman Coding?
Huffman Coding is a greedy algorithm used for lossless data compression. It assigns shorter binary codes to more frequent symbols and longer codes to less frequent ones, minimizing the overall encoded size.
The algorithm works by repeatedly combining the two least frequent symbols into a binary tree until a single tree remains.
Key Ideas Shown in the Animation
- Building a frequency table
- Greedy selection of minimum-frequency nodes
- Tree construction through repeated merging
- Prefix code generation from root-to-leaf paths
Teaching & UX/UI Design Principles
Huffman Coding involves abstract ideas such as frequency weighting and tree-based encoding. This visualization is designed to make those abstract steps concrete and intuitive.
- Cognitive Load Reduction: Tree construction and code generation are shown visually, reducing mental inference.
- Step-by-Step Progression: Each merge operation is animated sequentially to reveal the greedy strategy.
- Pre-attentive Processing: Frequency values and selected nodes are highlighted to guide attention.
- Object Constancy: Nodes remain visually stable as the tree grows, preserving structural understanding.
- Minimal UI Design: The interface removes distractions so learners focus on encoding logic.
Future versions will include voice narration to synchronize verbal explanations with tree construction and code assignment.