USER INTERFACES AND

VISUALIZATION
Prof.Pravin V.Shinde
 User Interface
• User interfaces - communication betweeen human information
seekers and IRS
• When users approach an IRS - unclear as to how they can
achieve their goal
 Contd..
• User interface should:
• Help to understand and express information needs
• Help formulate queries
• Help select among available information sources
• Help understand search results
• Helps monitor progress of search
HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
• 5 principles for the design of user interfaces
• offer informative feedback (The user should know where they are at and what is going on at all times.
• permit easy reversal of action (User can perform backtracking easily)
• support an internal locus of control (User have control over output)
• reduce working load memory
• provide alternative interfaces for novice and expert users
 DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Offer informative feedback
• important for information access interfaces
• system able to provide user with feedback about :
• relationship between their query specification and the documents retrieved
• relationship among retrieved documents,
• relationships between retrieved documents and metadata describing
collections
Contd..
Permit easy reversal of action
• able to move back and forth between screens
• icons – HOME, BACK
 DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Support an internal locus of control
• if the user has control over how and when feedback is provided, then
the system is said to provide an internal locus of control
 DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Reduce working memory load
• information access - iterative process
• goals change when information is found
• provide mechanisms to keep track of choices made during the search
process allowing users to return to temporarily abandoned strategies,
jump from one strategy to the next and retain information and
context across search sessions = HISTORY LIST (Already seen)
 DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Provide alternative interfaces for novice and expert users
• simple interfaces – easier to learn, less flexible, less efficient use
• powerful interfaces – allows a knowledgeable user to do more, more
control over the operation of the interface, time consuming, a
memory burden to occasional users
 DESIGN PRINCIPLES
• use scaffolding technique – novice user = simple interface that can be
learned quickly, but expert user = alternative interfaces which give
more control, more options, more features, etc
• good user interface design = provides intuitive bridges between the
simple and the advanced interfaces
• how much information to show the user = a major design choice in
information access interfaces
 ROLE OF VISUALIZATION
• Tools of computer interface design – windows, menus, icons, dialog
boxes, etc – use bit-mapped display and computer graphics to provide
a more accessible interface than command based display
• Scientific visualization – maps physical phenomena onto 2 or 3-
dimensional representations – eg. colorful image off the pattern and
peaks on the ocean floor constructed from data only
 ROLE OF VISUALIZATION
• Information visualization – humans highly attuned to images and
visual information – eg. remember a face from a picture much better
than reading a written description of the same face -visualization of
abstract information
• Use language to communicate abstract ideas which has no physical
manifestation – eg. how do we depict a picture whereby 2 parties are
negotiating, one for concessions and the other not agreeing to it?
INFORMATION ACCESS PROCESS
1.       Start with an information need
2.       Select a system and collection to search on
3.       Formulate a query
4.       Send query to the system
5.       Receive results in the form of information items
6.       Scan, evaluate, and interpret the results
7.       Either stop, or
8.       Reformulate the query and go to step 4
INFORMATION ACCESS PROCESS
• Information seeking process = standard information access
process or interaction cycle or simple interaction model
• Used by Web search engines
• Does not take into account that most users dislike to see
long lists of retrieved documents that does not answer
their query directly
• Assumes user information need is static and information
seeking process is one of successfully refining a query until
it retrieves all and only those documents relevant to the
original information need
 STARTING POINT
• Search interface - must provide good ways to get started
• Empty or blank screen does not provide any clues to help a user
decide how to start the search process
• Users start with very short queries (testing) – inspect results – modify
queries bit by bit
 STARTING POINT
• Information access interface - must help users select the sources and
collection to search on
• lists of collections (CLJ)
• overviews ( contents of the collection, show the topics represented within the
collection and can help users select or eliminate sources – Yahoo)
• examples/dialogs/wizards(provides examples of interaction with the system)
• automated source selection (SavvySearch)
QUERY SPECIFICATION
• To formulate a query, the user must select
collections, metadata descriptions, or information
sets against which the query is to be matched and
must specify words, phrases, descriptors or other
kinds of information that can be compared or
matched against the information in the collection
• The system will create a set of documents, metadata,
or other information type that match the query
specifications in some sense and display the results
to the users in some form
 QUERY SPECIFICATION
• 5 primary human-computer interaction styles - command language,
form filling, menu selection, direct manipulation and natural language
 CONTEXT
• Various interface techniques for placing the current document set in
the context of other document types in order to make one document
set more understandable
• Showing the relationship of the document set to the query terms,
collection overviews, descriptive metadata, hyperlink structure,
document structure, and to other documents within the set.
CONTEXT
• Most common way to show results for a query – list
information about the documents in order of
computed relevance to the query
• according to metadata attribute – document title, date,
source, length of article
• Ranking – numerical score or percentage
• Short or detailed view
• Once, document is retrieved, good to highlight
occurrence of search term with contrasting colour or
reverse video
USING RELEVANCE JUDGEMENTS
• Important component of information access process = query
formulation
• Effective techniques for query formulation = relevance feedback
• Standard interface for relevance feedback consists of :
• List of titles with checkboxes beside the titles that allow the user to mark
relevant documents
• Unmarked documents = not relevant or no opinion
USING RELEVANCE JUDGEMENTS
• Marked = relevant
OR
• Provide a choice among several checkboxes indicating
relevant or not relevant (with no selection implying no
opinion)
OR
• Users put a value against each document to mark level of
relevance - issues a search command - system re-executes
the search or generates a list of terms for the user to
select to compliment original query - list of new titles
appear
INTERFACE SUPPORT FOR SEARCH
PROCESS
• User interface designer must make decisions - how to arrange various
kinds of information on the computer screen and how to structure
the possible sequences of interactions
• Simple interface - special purpose search window for string matching
– FIND
• More complex search tasks – interface designers must decide how to
lay out the various choices and information displays within the
interface – command or menu structure
INTERFACE SUPPORT FOR SEARCH
PROCESS
• Windowing system – divide into different simultaneously
displayed views
• Able to link documents, cut and paste,
• Arrange information within windows – monolithic
display, tiled windows or overlapping windows
• How many kinds of information can be shown at the
same time – text display area as well as others eg.
thesaurus terms, query specifications, lists of saved
titles, etc.
• Good layout, graphics, font size - IMPT