Towards a Better VIEW : Visual Information Exploration on the Web

Given common search interfaces, it is difficult to gain orientation within large information spaces 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 active 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 search query visually within the Web-browser. This facilitates the construction of combined 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.

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