Frameworks for Information Exploration - A Case Study

The exploration of information has become a common task among data consumers, leveraged mostly by the increasing availability of (semi) structured data on the Web. Even though there has been much research on data visualization techniques to support sense making over large datasets, the design and development of tools to support exploration actions with sufficient expressivity still lacks a systematic approach. In this paper we present a case study as a means to argue the relevance of having a model of operations as approach to address expressivity issues in exploration tools. The case study demonstrates the value of a framework of operations not only for tool comparisons, but also for representing, describing, and leveraging sharing of exploration patterns among communities of users.