Towards a Better VIEW:
Visual Information Exploration on the Web
Marian Dörk
Diploma thesis, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, May 2008.
Faculty of Computer Science, Department of Simulation and Graphics
Supervisors: Sheelagh Carpendalea), Carey Williamsona), and Marcel Götzeb)
a) Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary
b) Faculty of Computer Science, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg
Abstract
Given common search interfaces, it is difficult to gain orientation within a large information space and explore information along conceptual dimensions such as time, location, and topics. In this thesis, I develop the idea of visual information exploration on the Web (VIEW) that aims to support a more engaging way of finding and exploring information by the means of coordinated visualizations. Drawing from both visual information seeking and exploratory search, I present the design of interactive visualization widgets called VisGets. VisGets provide the information seeker with visual overviews of multiple aspects of Web resources and a way to pose a query visually within the Web-browser. This facilitates the construction of combined search queries with temporal, spatial, and semantic constraints. A prototype VIEW system was implemented featuring three linked VisGets—time slider, geographic map, and tag cloud—that are used to visually explore news items aggregated from RSS feeds. Preliminary evaluations have shown positive reactions from information seekers and revealed possible applications for VisGets. Directions for future research on visual information exploration are outlined.
Live Demo
Tested in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.
Images
Video
MPEG-4 (16.9 MB), Quicktime (17.6 MB) and Windows Media Video (43.3 MB)
Files
Thesis and slides are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Publications
Marian Dörk, Carey Williamson, and Sheelagh Carpendale (2009) Towards Visual Web Search: Interactive Query Formulation and Search Result Visualization. WSSP: Workshop on Web Search Result Summarization and Presentation (WWW2009 Workshop), 2009.
Marian Dörk, Sheelagh Carpendale, Christopher Collins, and Carey Williamson (2008) VisGets: Coordinated Visualizations for Web-based Information Exploration and Discovery. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proceedings Visualization / Information Visualization 2008), 14(6), pages 1205-1212, November-December 2008.