Chapter 15: Information Search & Visualization

Team 3: Jacob Hicks, Victor Chen, Saba Alavi

Introduction

Information exploration overload/anxiety? Object-actions Interface (OAI) model helps by:

separating different task concepts separating high-level interface issues from low level interface

issues N00bs in an information-exploration system…

struggle to understand what they see whilst remembering their information needs

might be distracted by learning complex query languages/elaborate shape-coding rules

need direct-manipulation designs/simple visual-coding rules (low cognition) can request additional features by adjusting control panels

Experienced users want more functionality and power: a wider range of search tools, lots of options

Introduction (cont’d)

Task objects represented by interface objects in structured relational databases or text/media document libraries

Structured relational databases made up of relations and a schema (model) to describe relations

Relations have items (tuples/records), which consist of multiple atomic attributes, each of which have attribute values

Textual document library comprised of collections and descriptive attributes (e.g. location, media type, curator, donor, etc.)

Introduction (cont’d)

Multimedia document library same as textual document library, only instead of text, it’s media: images, sound, video, animations, etc.

Task actions (i.e. fact finding) decomposed into browsing/searching, represented by interface actions (i.e. scrolling, zooming, joining, linking)

Finding aids help users focus their info needs (i.e. table of contents, indices, abstracts, etc)

Database Query/Phrase Search

SQL a widespread standard for searching in structured relational database systems

Requires substantial time investment to learn Computer’s capacity for responding to natural

language query often limited Tradeoff exists between ease of use and

usefulness Empirical studies illustrate better performance

and more satisfaction when users are able to view and control the search

Database Query/Phrase Search

Improved designs & consistency across differing systems allows for faster performance, fewer mistakes, and more successful searches

Recommends four phase framework: Formulation – expressing the search Initiation of the action – launching the search Review of results Refinement – formulating the next step

Multimedia Document Searches

Current approaches to locating media rely on parallel databases and document searches

Advocates for ambitions captioning and attribute recording Classification according to useful search categories useful,

though costly and imperfect Graphical specification of query components:

Photo search Map Search Design/diagram search Sound search Video Search Animation Search

Information Visualization

Bandwidth of vision is highOverview first, zoom and filter, then

details on demand.Data type by task

1-D Linear

Text documentsSource CodeBifocal DisplayValue Bars

2-D Map

MapsFloorplansNewspaper layouts

3D World

Real objects, models, ect.Must keep track of position orientationOcclusion

Temporal data

Time lines1D linearStart and finish timeEvents may overlap

Multidimesional data

n-dimensional spaceDatabases with n attributesCan be 2D or 3DScattergrams

Tree data

HierarchiesCan be shown as lines and nodesTabbed text filesCones in 3D

Network data

NetworksCannot be written as a treeNode-and-linkSquare matrix

Overview Task

Movable field of view3 to 30 zoom amountFisheye

Zoom task

View a specific area in detailSmooth zooming preserves orientation“A satisfying way to zoom in is to point to

a location and to issue a zooming command”

Filter task

Remove unwanted itemsWidgets to regulate processDynamic control of items

Details-on-demand task

Select item or group to get detailsClick on an item to get popup window

Relate task

View relationships amoung itemsSelect an item to highlight related items

History task

Keep history to support undoTasks from the past combinded

Extract Task

Extraction of subcollection of parametersAllow to save the records that result from

a searchSave settings

Advanced Filtering

Dynamic queriesNumeric range sliders Alphasliders for namesBottons for small sets of categories

Commercial Information–retrieval systems

Example – DIALOG or First Search Permit complex Boolean expressions

with parentheses but they are difficult to use

When we say or in English it means not both, but in Boolean OR is inclusive .

New York and Boston ( result 0 )

Another form of filtering …

Apply a user-constructed set of keywords to dynamically generated information. Such as incoming email messages…..

A social form of filtering is collaborative filtering ….. Music, Restaurants ..

Summary

Improved user interface to traditional databese-query or multimedia-document search will spawn appealing new products.

The more Flexible the better…15.7 Search in complex structured

documents. graphics, images, sound or video persents grand opportunities for the design of advanced user interfaces and powerful search engines .