The Aquabrowser

CHAPTER 6 pdf (1.1 Mb)

The next step involved designing the user interface of the proposed visual database. Several design support systems that make use of precedent designs were first reviewed. From this, a list of design criteria was compiled, which was supplemented with the design considerations that resulted from the previously conducted contextual inquiry. Using these criteria as guidelines in the design process, attention was first concentrated on how to retrieve and present the design knowledge, which is organized in the database, in a way meaningful to and applicable for designers.


Visual Thesaurus

 

 

MDS-INTERACTIVE

A review of current information visualization systems showed them to be rigid in their presentation, to be lacking overview and to be limited in depicting the actual meaning of the information. To overcome these shortcomings a new interaction technique, called MDS-Interactive, was developed. Using this technique the user browses a large database of objects by interacting with a small set of samples, which are shown in a layout which expresses the similarities between these samples. This layout is dynamically created using a Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) algorithm, which arranges the samples in such a way that the distances between pairs of samples express their (dis)similarities according to a similarity criterion. The main interactions are removing samples that have little meaning for the user, adjusting the weight of the similarity criterion, and calling up new samples from the database. While performing these actions, the layout is continuously adjusted to best reflect the similarity relations in the sample set. Using the ‘research through design’ approach several prototypes, all rich in both design quality and user experience, were built to test this new query technique. Evaluations with potential users showed it to have a high potential as an interaction method for accessing large information collections.

 

 

   ProductWorld:
      Indexing

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PRODUCTWORLD

The next step involved integrating the two-step indexing procedure, which was established through the organizing experiment, with the MDS-Interactive technique into a new tool named ProductWorld. Again, a fully functional prototype was built. In ProductWorld the designer enters product samples into the database by positioning them into a two-dimensional area in such a way that their relative positions express their perceived similarities regarding a specific criterion. Thus product types are being established consisting of samples that share certain features. Subsequently, the designer can identify product types with a textual label that typifies the characteristics of the type without having to attach keywords to each sample individually.

Retrieving samples from ProductWorld proceeds through a dialogue similar to that of MDS-Interactive. A query starts with retrieving three random samples from the collection to create an initial selection, from which a designer can start his exploration. Samples can be added to or removed from the selection, the scale with which the samples are positioned relative to each other can be increased or decreased, a selection can be temporarily stored, and the names attached to the samples can be shown or hidden.

   ProductWorld:
      Retrieving

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