Lucy Terry Nowell

Visualizing search results: some alternatives to query-document similarity

A digital library of computer science literature, Envision provides powerful information visualization by displaying search results as a matrix of icons, with layout semantics under user control. Envision’s Graphic View interacts with an Item Summary Window giving users access to bibliographic information, and XMosaic provides access to complete bibliographic information, abstracts, and full content. While many visualization interfaces for information retrieval systems depict ranked query-document similarity, Envision graphically presents a variety of document characteristics and supports an extensive range of user tasks. Formative usability evaluation results show great user satisfaction with Envision’s style of presentation and the document characteristics visualized.

Users, user interfaces, and objects: Envision, a digital library

Project Envision aims to build a “user-centered database from the computer science literature,” initially using the publications of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Accordingly, we have interviewed potential users, as well as experts in library, information, and computer science—to understand their needs, to become aware of their perception of existing information systems, and to collect their recommendations. Design and formative usability evaluation of our interface have been based on those interviews, leading to innovative query formulation and search results screens that work well according to our usability testing. Our development of the Envision database, system software, and protocol for client-server communication builds upon work to identify and represent “objects” that will facilitate reuse and high-level communication of information from author to reader (user). All these efforts are leading not only to a usable prototype digital library but also to a set of nine principles for digital libraries, which we have tried to follow, covering issues of representation, architecture, and interfacing.

Envision: a user-centered database of computer science literature

Project Envision is an early NSF-funded digital library effort to develop a multimedia collection of computer science literature with full-text searching and full-content retrieval capabilities. Envision was launched in 1991 in accordance with the ACM Publications Boards plans for encouraging research studies to develop an electronic archive for computer science.

Exploring search results with Envision

Envision is a multimedia digital library of computer science literature, with full-text searching and full-content retrieval capabilities. The Envision system is noteworthy for two characteristics: 1) the high quality of the search results returned by our free text search system and 2) a highly usable user interface that provides powerful information visualization facilities, enabling users explore patterns in the literature, changing the display as their interests change.

What if there were desktop access to the computer science literature

What if there were an electronic computer science library? Consider the possibilities of having your favorite publications available within fingers reach. Consider Project Envision, an ongoing effort to build a user-centered database from the computer science literature. This paper describes the projects first year progress, stressing the underlying motivation, user-centered development, and the overall design.

Graphical encoding in information visualization

In producing a design to visualize search results for a digital library called Envision [5, 7], we found that choosing graphical devices and document attributes to be encoded with each graphical device is a surprisingly difficult task. By graphical devices we mean those visual display elements (e.g., color, shape, size, position, etc.) used to convey encoded information. Research in several areas provides scientific guidance for design and evaluation of graphical encodings which might otherwise be reduced to opinion and personal taste. However, literature offers inconclusive and often conflicting viewpoints, leading us to further empirical research.