Zoomable User Interfaces for the Semantic WEB

摘要

To retrieve information from databases, users must often understand the underlying data schemas. The University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) developed an interface, to visualize the taxonomic hierarchy of data, and applied integrated searching and browsing so that users need not have complete knowledge either of appropriate keywords or the organization of the data. UMCP also conducted a qualitative user study of the interface to describe usage patterns and issues related to tree visualization of the data and domain. Interestingly, users with different levels of interest in the domain had different interaction preferences. The study provides further evidence for the value of integrated searching and browsing and interactive tree visualization for information retrieval and understanding.