David Martín-Moncunill

A usability study of taxonomy visualisation user interfaces in digital repositories

Purpose – This paper aims to analyse user interfaces for search and collection visualisation and navigation from a usability perspective. The final aim is to offer repository owners a scientific basis to support their decisions when they have to choose an interface that can really help users to effectively locate and visualise resources over large digital collections. Design/methodology/approach – This HCI study is divided into two parts: perception and usability. The first one analysed three perceptual abilities required to use interfaces: attention, retention of information and understanding. The second one was run on an ad hoc generated collection including more than 40,000 European digital resources collected and classified according to a given branch of knowledge in the Art & Architecture Thesaurus. Findings – Although visual interfaces proved useful for certain tasks related to resource discovery and search, and despite the overall good general user opinion, the authors found it necessary to conduct...

Trends and challenges of visual search interfaces in digital libraries and repositories

This paper aims to present an overview of the challenges encountered in integrating visual search interfaces into digital libraries and repositories. These challenges come in various forms, including information visualisation, the use of knowledge organisation systems and metadata quality. The main purpose of this study is the identification of criteria for the evaluation and integration of visual search interfaces, proposing guidelines and recommendations to improve information retrieval tasks with emphasis on the education-al context.,The information included in this study was collected based on a systematic literature review approach. The main information sources were explored in several digital libraries, including Science Direct, Scopus, ACM and IEEE, and include journal articles, conference proceedings, books, European project reports and deliverables and PhD theses published in an electronic format. A total of 142 studies comprised the review.,There are several issues that authors did not fully discuss in this literature review study; more specific, aspects associated with access of digital resources in digital libraries and repositories based on human computer interaction, i.e. usability and learnability of user interfaces; design of a suitable navigation method of search based on simple knowledge organisation schemes; and the use of usefulness of visual search interfaces to locate relevant resources.,The main steps for carrying out a systematic review are drawn from health care; this methodology is not commonly used in fields such as digital libraries and repositories. The authors aimed to apply the fundamentals of the systematic literature review methodology considering the context of this study. Additionally, there are several aspects of accessibility that were not considered in the study, such as accessibility to content for disabled people as defined by ISO/IEC 40500:2012.,No other systematic literature reviews have been conducted in this field. The research presents an in-depth analysis of the criteria associated with searching and navigation methods based on the systematic literature review approach. The analysis is relevant for researchers in the field of digital library and repository creation in that it may direct them to considerations in designing and implementing visual search interfaces based on the use of information visualisation.

Evaluating the degree of domain specificity of terms in large terminologies: The case of AGROVOC

Purpose – Large terminologies usually contain a mix of terms that are either generic or domain specific, which makes the use of the terminology itself a difficult task that may limit the positive effects of these systems. The purpose of this paper is to systematically evaluate the degree of domain specificity of the AGROVOC controlled vocabulary terms as a representative of a large terminology in the agricultural domain and discuss the generic/specific boundaries across its hierarchy. Design/methodology/approach – A user-oriented study with domain-experts in conjunction with quantitative and systematic analysis. First an in-depth analysis of AGROVOC was carried out to make a proper selection of terms for the experiment. Then domain-experts were asked to classify the terms according to their domain specificity. An evaluation was conducted to analyse the domain-experts’ results. Finally, the resulting data set was automatically compared with the terms in SUMO, an upper ontology and MILO, a mid-level ontolog...

Usability of Big Data Resources in Visual Search Interfaces of Repositories Based on KOS

Digital repositories allow storage and manage digital resources and collections of museums, libraries, archives in order to be use in educational context. Unfortunately, several deficiencies in user interfaces based on resource discovery, user-centered design, and strategy of search, among others, prevent the widespread use of the valuable services that data of repository offers. Having the intuition that some deficiencies are reflected in usability problems associated with interfaces, we conducted a research from the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) perspective in order to present a novel framework to evaluate usability of different types of visual interfaces based on visualization techniques and Knowledge Organization System (KOS). Our study analyzed the efficacy of a framework in order to allow repository creators the assessment and selection of appropriate user interfaces according to the needs and demands of the data collection of learning objects. The preliminary results show that framework could improve the select of appropriate visualization techniques after to development of them in a digital repository. Although, some problems associated with the limited computational capabilities for information visualization are difficult to overcome.

Evaluating the concept specialization distance from an end-user perspective: The case of AGROVOC

Purpose The common understanding of generalization/specialization relations assumes the relation to be equally strong between a classifier and any of its related classifiers and also at every level of the hierarchy. Assigning a grade of relative distance to represent the level of similarity between the related pairs of classifiers could correct this situation, which has been considered as an oversimplification of the psychological account of the real-world relations. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The evaluation followed an end-user perspective. In order to obtain a consistent data set of specialization distances, a group of 21 persons was asked to assign values to a set of relations from a selection of terms from the AGROVOC thesaurus. Then two sets of representations of the relations between the terms were built, one according to the calculated concept of specialization weights and the other one following the original order of the thesaurus. In total, 40 persons were asked to choose between the two sets following an A/B test-like experiment. Finally, short interviews were carried out after the test to inquiry about their decisions. Findings The results show that the use of this information could be a valuable tool for search and information retrieval purposes and for the visual representation of knowledge organization systems (KOS). Furthermore, the methodology followed in the study turned out to be useful for detecting inconsistencies in the thesaurus and could thus be used for quality control and optimization of the hierarchical relations. Originality/value The use of this relative distance information, namely, “concept specialization distance,” has been proposed mainly at a theoretical level. In the current experiment, the authors evaluate the potential use of this information from an end-user perspective, not only for text-based interfaces but also its application for the visual representation of KOS. Finally, the methodology followed for the elaboration of the concept specialization distance data set showed potential for detecting possible inconsistencies in KOS.

User Experiences in Virtual Reality Environments Navigation Based on Simple Knowledge Organization Systems

During last decades, there has been concern on organizing the information in order to make it more understandable. Many organizations are focused on providing a better classification in such a way that information will be understood by humans and allow a rapid access to resources. This article is intended to present a proposal to strengthen the uses of virtual reality based on simple knowledge representation schemes, in order to provide an environment for navigation through concepts of a given knowledge area that will enable a virtual learning environment. Finally, outcomes from this survey are presented by TAM testing in order to perform validation mechanisms for the proposal.

Selection and Use of Search Mechanisms in Learning Object Repositories: the Case of Organic.Edunet

Difficulties in finding learning objects (LOs) in LO repositories (LORs) are one of the main barriers, which prevent LORs from being globally adopted. During the Organic.Edunet European research project, different search interfaces were developed with the intention of facilitating the location of LOs, considering users would tend to use different interfaces, according to the objectives and specific search context. This paper resumes the results of a usability study carried out in Organic.Edunet portal, where users were asked to complete different search tasks that were clearly oriented to the use of one of the existing interfaces, and provides a snapshot about how this knowledge was transferred to Organic.Lingua project.

Navigating through the Linking Open Data cloud datasets: Preliminary ideas of a visual search tool based on its defined domains.

The current increase in the publication of “Open Access” data has greatly facilitated the emergence of initiatives to provide users with information from different areas of expertise. Particularly, DBPedia has attracted the interest from several organizations and entities involved in the hosting, processing and display of large amounts of data, willing to openly share them. However, the vast amount of information presented today makes it necessary to provide more interfaces that facilitate this task, taking into account the peculiarities of this technology. The following article presents the results of evaluation of a visual interface prototype that facilitates search, display and visualization of organizations classified by their domain in the Linking Open Data (LOD) cloud.