zaphiris et al. - 2004 - exploring the use of information visualization for digital libraries - new...
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EXPLORING THE USE OF
INFORMATION VISUALIZATION FOR
DIGITAL LIBRARIES
Panayiotis Zaphiris, Kulvinder Gill, Terry H.-Y. Ma,Stephanie Wilson and Helen Petrie
This paper presents the findings from a study conducted to explore the current and
future use of information visualization (IV) for digital libraries (DL). A series of query
techniques and participatory design workshops were employed with the goal of actively
involving users in identifying the key characteristics and applications of IV for DLs. The
methodology employed, key findings and overall conclusions are presented and
discussed.
Introduction
The work reported in this paper is the outcome of a study we conducted to
investigate the current use of information visualization (IV) techniques by the
joint information systems committee (JISC) services in the UK and future possible
uses of such techniques in digital library (DL) applications. One of the key
objectives of this project was to actively involve users (through the use of
Participatory Design) in the development of low fidelity prototypes that illustrate
the use of IV for web-based, end-user oriented DL services.
The paper first presents the theoretical foundations for IV and DLs. It then
explores the link between these two fields and finally describes the methodology
employed, the results obtained and the overall conclusions and recommenda-
tions of the project.
Theoretical Foundations
In recent years a number of influential IV techniques have been developed
and found application in different domains (e.g. starfield displays (Albert and
Shneiderman 1994a), Bead (Chalmers and Chitson 1992) and self-organizing maps
(Lagus et al. 1996).
New challenges in IV emerged with the increasing use of the World Wide
Web. Many visualizations have been developed for the purpose of browsing large
collections of online documents, or large data sets (e.g. FilmFinder (Albert and
Shneiderman 1994b)). In addition, the use of different information visualization
techniques for navigation (Spence 2001) have recently been the focus of anumber of studies (Zaphiris et al. 2002; Bederson and Schneiderman 2003).
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What is Information Visualization (IV)?
Card et al. (1999) define visualization as:
The use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of data
to amplify cognition. (Card et al. 1999)
They define IV as
The use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of
abstract data to amplify cognition. (Card et al. 1999)
The main goals of IV are discovery, decision making, and explanation. IV is
useful to the extent that it increases our ability to perform these and other
cognitive activities. In visualization, abstractions are based on physical space,
whilst non-physical information such as financial data, business information,
collections of documents, and abstract conceptions may also benefit from being
presented in a visual form.
In the information age, where the volume and use of online information is
increasing, there is a need for new forms of presentation and manipulation of
electronic data. Tufte (2001) described two fundamental rules for visual display:
. Maximize the data-ink ratio, i.e. every drop of ink, or pixel on your screen,
ought to be information bearing. Anything that appears simply for decoration
should be removed.
. Maximize information density, i.e. prefer displays with more rather than
less information.
Tufte (2001) also observes that maps are a superior means of applying
these rules, as they convey more information per square unit of display area than
other presentation techniques.
It is thought that visualizing information by representing the semantic
relationships (through metaphors like spatial proximity and visual links), can
facilitate the development and application of the users cognitive map of the
information space (Egan 1988; Vicente and Willeges 1988; Hook et al. 1996). Thismakes the task of searching and browsing for information similar to that of real
world navigation. For example, map overviews (as an aid to hypertext navigation)
have been found to benefit users (Vicente and Willeges 1988; Sein et al. 1993;
Stanney and Salvendy 1995). Furthermore, the use of virtual environments takes
the notion of visualization one step further by providing full, real-time
interactivity and the ability to view the relationships between objects from an
unlimited number of perspectives (Cribbin 2003).
Information Visualization (IV) and Digital Libraries (DLs)
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lingual collections of documents that are distributed and accessed worldwide.
Given the fact that they are becoming the main repository of mankinds
knowledge, the design of user-friendly interfaces to access, understand, and
manage DL content has become an active and challenging field of study (Fox and
Urs 2002).
With the ability to share worldwide collections of information, DLs have
become one of the common means for sharing and disseminating information by
individuals or groups that select, organize and catalogue large numbers of
documents.
According to Borner and Chen (2002), our primary means of accessing DLs
today are search engines that retrieve very large numbers of documents relevant
to our search terms. However, search interfaces lack the ability to support
information exploration, making it increasingly difficult for scientists andpractitioners to gain a macro view of DLs, to locate germane resources, to
monitor the evolution of their own and other knowledge domain, and to trace
the influence of theories within and across domains.
The increasing availability of online information makes it necessary for
librarians and information professionals to efficiently and effectively catalogue
the large amount of documents produced (Borner and Chen 2002). There is a
need for new tools that will assist scientists and researchers to identify and
manage all these useful information resources.
The Application of Information Visualization (IV) to DigitalLibraries (DLs)
In applying IV to DL interfaces, the aim is to shift the users mental load
from slow reading to faster perceptual processes such as visual pattern
recognition.
According to Borner and Chen (2002), there are three common usage
scenarios for visual interfaces to DLs:
1. To support the identification of the composition of a retrieval result,
understand the interrelation of retrieved documents to one another, and
refine a search.
2. To gain an overview of the coverage of a DL and to facilitate browsing.
3. To visualize user interaction data in relation to available documents in order
to evaluate and improve DL usage.
Furthermore, Borner and Chen (2002) give suggestions on effective design
and research directions in information visualization and on how visualizationcould assist DLs:
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. Provide new means to interact with data, for example, to provide an overview
of what is covered by a DL, enable users to filter out relevant documents
and to examine relationships among those documents.
. Good labeling to ensure that the selection of meaningful words and their
display would not be over plotted.
. To provide multiple perspectives to one data source.
. To support searching of text, image, video, spatial data.
. Personal baskets for users to store previously selected document sets.
. Usability and usefulness studies are needed to improve interfaces and to
specify what does and does not work.
. Strong collaboration among librarians and programmers will help to improve
the design usability of interfaces considerably.
When designing DLs, designing meaningful overviews so that patterns canbe easily recognized, creating comprehensible interfaces to specify what they
want, and providing effective displays of search results are real challenges. The
visual information seeking mantra by Ben Shneiderman:
Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on demand. (Shneiderman
1994)
This provides a good starting point. By interpreting this mantra, a remarkably
diverse set of research and commercial interfaces (Card et al. 1999; Shneiderman
1998; Reed and Heller 1997) demonstrating the use of IV in DLs has been
produced.
Digital Library (DL) Tasks and Information Visualization (IV)
Three key tasks in DLs are searching, navigating and browsing. We describe
below the link of IV with these tasks:
Searching
Search results from DLs are often displayed as a textual list, with 10/20
items per page. Shneiderman et al. (1999) proposed a framework that increases
clarity and user control while it reduces inconsistencies in text-search user
interfaces. This allows designers of specific systems to offer a variety of features in
an orderly and consistent way. Users begin the search process by considering
their information needs and clarifying their search goals, after which they are
ready to employ a computer-based system for the four phases: formulation (what
happens before the user starts a search); action (starting the search); review of
results (what the user sees resulting from the search); and refinement (whathappens after review of results and before going back to formulation).
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Shniederman et al. (1999) suggested the use of a two-dimensional display
with continuous variables to view several thousands search results at once. It has
been applied to a digital video library, a legal information system and to a
technical library using the ACM Computing Classification System.
Navigation
In terms of navigation, research in information visualizations (Card et al.
1999; Shneiderman 1998; Bederson and Shneiderman 2003) produced a
remarkably diverse set of interfaces.
Two important strategies employed to achieve efficient navigation are:
1. Two-dimensional visualizations.
Two-dimensional visualizations with meaningful axes have been an effectivevisualization strategy because thousands of items can be shown at once.
Typical axes make use of continuous variables (e.g. relevance or publication
date) or categorical variables (e.g. language or name of journal). The labels on
such axes are cues to searchers and may contain valuable information if they
are ordinal variables.
2. Browsers for hierarchical data sets.
Hierarchical structures are common nowadays and very often successful, (e.g.
Yahoo!). Hierarchies have the potential to reduce complexity by organizing
related information into comprehensible structures. Hierarchies are typicallyshown by textual lists of one level at a time, by node-link diagrams, cone trees
(Hearst and Karadi 1997) or an outliner in which levels and branches can be
expanded and contracted (Nation et al. 1997).
Graphical Interface for Digital Libraries (GRIDL) (Shneiderman et al. 1999)
adopts these two important strategies by combining the use of hierarchical
browse tool with a two-dimensional visualization. This combination preserves
visual overviews and enables users to rapidly comprehend search results.
Browsing
According to Shneiderman (1997), tasks can range from specific fact-finding
to more unstructured open-ended browsing of known databases and exploration
of the availability of information on a topic.
Several techniques have been developed in the last few years focusing on
interfaces that allow users to browse and search collections of information.
Example include: the dynamic queries (Ahlberg and Shneiderman 1996), visual
information seeking (Ahlberg and Shneiderman 1994) and query previews (Doanet al. 1996; North et al. 1996).
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feature a visual representation of a database (typically with a scatterplot or
starfield display), a visual representation of a query using a collection of widgets
(e.g. sliders), and tight coupling between these two components. Users browse
the database by interacting with the interface widgets. Each change produces a
new query, the results of which are immediately and continuously shown in thedisplay, supporting a progressive refinement of the search, continuous reformu-
lation of goals, and visual scanning to identify results. Query previews also deal
with large distributed databases, and use previews of the data to maintain real
time feedback and limit access to the network.
Participatory Design
Participatory design (PD) (often termed the Scandinavian Challenge
(Bjeknes et al. 1987)) refers to a design approach that focuses on the intended
user of the service or product, and advocates the active involvement of users
throughout the design process. User involvement is seen as critical both because
users are the experts in the work practices supported by these technologies and
because users ultimately will be the ones creating new practices in response to
new technologies (Blomberg and Henderson 1990).
Blomberg and Henderson (1990) characterize the PD approach as
advocating three tenets: (a) The goal is to improve the quality of life; (b) The
orientation is collaborative; (c) The process is iterative.We hypothesized that the use of such an approach as a means of
requirement acquisition through prototyping would achieve high quality of data
and would also motivate our participants to share freely their views and opinions
about the use of IV in DLs.
We now present the methodology we followed and our key findings.
Methodology
The main objective of this project was to engage in the development of IVlow-fidelity prototypes. Prototypes were developed for each of the four
categories of Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) services that were
considered during the project: Portal, Image, Bibliographic and Geospatial
services.
The JISC was established as an advisory committee, working on behalf of
funding councils to provide and support the implementation of Information and
Computing Technologies (ICTs) in further and higher education. They have
already achieved many of their goals by providing expertise, independent advice,
guidance and key resources to help institutions throughout the country deliver ahigh level of service.
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environment providing secure and convenient access to a comprehensive
collection of scholarly and educational material (JISC, 2002a). With this aim it is
essential that all resources are successfully managed and presented in the most
coherent way.
The Information Environment (IE) is composed of a number of services each
falling under one of four key categories:
. Portals (Resource Discovery Services)
. Bibliographic Services
. Geospatial Services
. Digital image libraries
A key concern for JISC is the wide variety of users needs and the usability
of their services:
Users do not all want to access information in the same way but will require
a diverse range of views of resources in order to satisfy their needs (JISC 2002).
IV is considered one of the ways to enhance the usability of services.
Portals (Resource Discovery Services)
Portals are a single point of entry. Characteristic examples of portals include
yahoo!, bbc.co.uk etc. Resource Discovery Service (RDS) improves the current
search engines and offers better search accuracy for the users by using theirprofile information.
Bibliographic services
Bibliographic services contain databases in a form of an organized
collection of information. The database contains descriptive information (citation
and subject headings) for publications, such as books, periodical articles,
videotapes or government documents. The structure of the database generally
consists of the following information:
. Index / includes citation and subject headings, also known as descriptors, for
each publication. Catalyst, the librarys online catalogue is an example of an
index database.
. Abstracted Index / includes the citation, subject headings (descriptors) and
a summary of the content of the publication.
Geospatial services
One of the key geo-spatial services provided by JISC is Digimap, one of the
f f i t l lib i h d l i f ti i th W ld Wid
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static maps stored on their database, but also quickly generate maps on the fly in
relation to the users specific needs.
Digital image librariesThe number of images available on the Web was estimated in 1997 to be
between 10 and 30 million (Eakins and Graham 1999), a figure that we can
assume has vastly increased in the last five years. Digital image libraries are now a
key resource in retriving such images over the Internet.
Experimental Design
Representative users were recruited to participate in PD sessions. In total 22
individuals were recruited to take part in these sessions. Six were present for the
Portal, Images and Bibliographical services and four for the Geospatial service.
Care was taken so that users participated in the design of prototypes for services
in which they had good expertise (e.g. librarians together with students
participated in the Bibliographical session).
All sessions were fully equipped with the necessary stationery i.e. colored
pens, pencils, felt tips, scissors, card, paper, acetates, overhead projector, post-it
notes etc to help the participants in getting their thoughts on paper. The sessions
were also video recorded and photographed.
The structure for each session was as follows:
1. Welcome and introduction: Participants were welcomed and asked to read
and sign a consent form.
2. Introduction to information visualization: A high-level introduction to
information visualization was presented. The introduction also outlined
common misconceptions regarding information visualization.
3. Introduction to the service: An introduction to the particular service was
provided (for instance, a description of a portal along with specific examples
of portal sites).
4. Requirements gathering: The first activity of the session focused on getting
the participants to start thinking about the service that they were looking
at. The technique used here was that of affinity diagramming. Affinity
diagramming is a simple and effective method to gather a number of ideas
that are then organized by grouping related items together (Institute 1996).
A specific scenario was given for each service and the participants were
required to individually brainstorm ideas on post-it notes in terms of what
information and/or functional requirements users have. The participantswere asked to restrict themselves to one idea per post-it note.
Th i i h k d l h f h i i d
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already been placed on the board. This was repeated until all of their ideas
were put on the board.
The facilitator then led the participants in naming the groupings by reading
out all the requirements per category and giving the opportunity to the
participants to reshuffle the requirements to other categories if needed.Participants also highlighted any relationships that existed among the
categories.
Thirty minutes were allocated to this activity.
5. Documentation on information visualization techniques: Samples of
information visualization techniques were given to the participants to
browse for five minutes. The techniques were not discussed with the
participants to prevent any bias.
6. Paper-based prototyping in pairs: The participants were asked to work in pairsto sketch design ideas using some form of information visualization for the
given scenario using the ideas that had been generated in the previous activity.
They were asked to restrict their designs to one of the categories and not
design a whole interface for the entire web site (for example concentrating
on the search function).
The participants were allowed to refer to the documentation provided and
use any or none of the techniques illustrated.
Thirty-five minutes were allocated to this activity but, depending on the
stage reached by the participants, an additional ten minutes could be
granted.
7. Presentation of initial designs: Each pair presented their design explaining how
it worked and where information visualization techniques were applied.
8. Final prototype: To develop the final prototype, each group was asked to
choose one of three options: (a) work in existing pairs on the same prototype;
(b) work together as a whole group developing one prototype to the next level;
(c) work together as a whole group starting afresh and developing a new
prototype.
All groups chose to work together either developing an existing idea and
taking characteristics from other prototypes on board or developing a new
prototype combining methods/techniques or thinking of new ways to
present the information. The groups were given 40 minutes to design their
prototype.
Results
As an illustration of our overall results from this study we present in this
ti l th fi di f th ti i t d i i f th t l
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Portals: Requirements Gathering
The hypothetical scenario setting given to the participants was:
JISC is a public organization that supports further and higher education.
JISC has released a tender to develop a new portal site aimed at students infurther and higher education to provide information and resources on Music. The
tender requires you to: identify the requirements of the site i.e. what users want
in terms of information and functionality.
Figure 1 shows the findings from the affinity diagram exercise. The
participants proposed twelve main categories of functionality/content for this
service (namely: setting, classifieds/second hand instruments, concerts and
tickets, online music, intercultural music, communications, news, further informa-
tion and outside links, learning music, information about artists, musical genres,
search) with a number of elements under each category.The participants also established some relationships among the categories/
items between news (charts), intercultural music (charts across the world) and
online music (download music and audio samples).
Portals: Paper-Based Prototypes
The participants worked in pairs taking the findings of the requirements
gathering into consideration to design an idea by applying some form of
FIGURE 1
Portals affinity diagram.
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Group 1:
The purpose of this design (Figure 2) was to track specific music journals
across the world.
. The dots on the world map represent cities.
. The selection criteria are presented below the map. The user can select
the country they wish to find music journals for, the timeframe (1960 /1970),
the chart level (e.g. top ten), and the Genre (e.g. pop, jazz, folk etc).
. The results are displayed in a color-coded format and symbols on the map.
. It is possible to filter out information and have the information presented
in different views. The user can zoom in and zoom out at a continent and
country level.
. Data between countries can be compared, and viewed using the
other visualization methods such as histograms, bar charts, pie charts etc
by manipulating the criteria.
. A pop-up window appears to view details of selection e.g. top ten charts in
New York.
The design was inspired by two information visualization techniques:
d (D t l 2001) d i D f f d i
FIGURE 2
Portals Group 1.
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represented in the map. Users adjust the widgets to form composite queries and
the map elements are then shaded in response to the query. Zooming interfaces
allow the user to smoothly zoom into the visualization in order to view more
detailed information and to zoom out for overview information.
Group 2:
The purpose of this design (Figure 3) was to demonstrate the sales of
albums and concerts worldwide.
. The user can search for sales or concerts worldwide by selecting the
appropriate tab/link at the top of the page.
. The user can zoom in to continent, country, city, town via the worldwide map.
. The search settings on the right help refine the criteria, as once the userhas selected the desired location they can search by period (1990/1994),
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number of sales, genre and similar music. The combo boxes expand to allow
the user to select/refine the search criteria.
. The results are immediately displayed in the bottom left hand box. The
squares, triangles and circles represent albums, singles and DVD sales,
respectively. The Y axis shows the number of sales and the X axis shows theyear it was published. (The triangles etc are not grouped together because
they are similar but because they have similar number of sales.)
. The labels represent the different groups (genres) and are placed on the
display for easier selection.
. On selecting a label, further information is provided on the right beneath
the search settings.
The design was inspired by the following information visualization
techniques: dynamaps (Dang et al. 2001), zooming, excentric labeling (Feketeand Plaisant 1999), and Shneidermans FilmFinder (Ahlberg and Shneiderman
1994) application. Excentric labeling is a technique whereby objects in the
general neighborhood of the cursor are labeled dynamically. FilmFinder was an
early example of a dynamic query interface. The user is presented with a two-
dimensional scattergram representation of the dataset which they can filter
dynamically using alphaslider widgets and can also zoom in and out.
Group 3:
The purpose of this design (Figure 4) was to learn about music from
different cultures.
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. Selecting a location zooms in to select a city, town.
. Information can also be searched using the search on the top right. If search
is used, the map will zoom in to the selected city.
. Details on the right hand side of the screen are empty until a user selects
a location.. When a user selects a location, e.g. Egypt, the Associated Genres appear in the
top right hand side of the screen.
. On selecting one of the options provided in the Associated Genres window
further details are provided in the pop-up window shown below.
This design was also inspired by the dynamaps (Dang et al. 2001) and
zooming IV techniques.
Portals: Final Prototype
Finally, the participants worked in a group of six to design the final set of
prototypes (Figures 5 and 6).
The first prototype was an enhancement of Group 2s prototype comparing
the number of songs reaching number one.
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. The globe presents an overview of the information; the selection of an area
will zoom in to country, city, and/or town. A user selects two areas e.g.
Australia and U.K to compare the song and the place it appeared in the
chart. The results are displayed in the bar chart.
.
If the user enters the interface via the globe, they can further refine theirsearch using the timeframe on top of the bar chart.
. Alternatively the user may enter their criteria using the search settings which
are presented in the top right hand corner.
. On selecting a particular entry from the bar chart specific information about
that song is presented under the search settings e.g. singer, email, lyrics,
number of weeks in top ten.
. Changing the criteria immediately updates the bar chart.
. The problem outlined by the participants was that too much information
is presented for small screens.
The design was inspired by the following information visualization
FIGURE 6
Portals Combined Prototype 2.
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The second version was an enhancement of Group 3s concept attempting
to show information on music from different cultures.
. The globe presents an overview of the information; the selection of an area
will zoom in to country, city, and/or town.. On selecting a particular area, the pie chart will show music from that culture
and will illustrate where in the world that music is listened to/produced. The
legend will show the percentage.
. The search settings allow a user to further refine the criteria. For example,
by selecting Egypt as the country, Arabic as the culture and music produced
in 2000, the pie chart will depict all Arabic music across the world.
. Changing the criteria immediately updates the pie chart.
The design was inspired by the following information visualization
technique: dynamaps (Dang et al. 2001) and zooming.
Conclusions
In our view the key finding of this study is the fact that it has demonstrated
the benefit of involving users and other key stakeholders in the design of
interactive DL services.
Through our study we found that all stakeholders had valuable suggestions
and input to make when it comes to designing IV techniques for DLs.
Key Findings
1. Our participatory design sessions through input from users and other
stakeholders developed representative paper prototypes of IV techniques
and methods that are applicable to specific web-based, end user-oriented
JISC services.
2. Our participatory design results section specifically proposes which IV
techniques have been suggested for which type of JISC service (portals,
images, bibliographic or geo-spatial).
Specific Findings
We noticed that the majority of participants of our focus groups, although
involved in their majority with the development and maintenance of JISC
services, were not familiar with IV. Participants in the geo-spatial focus groups
were more familiar with IV as this area is considered to be closely related to the
discipline of Geospatial information.There were misconceptions with participants thinking that IV is simply
b t 3D d i t l lit S ti i t d th t IV
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The majority of participants thought that visual presentations (e.g. maps)
are useful in assisting their search when using DLs. Both stakeholders and end
users were interested in exploring how the relationships between results could
be display / i.e. how the results generated correlate between each other and
how users could compare the results at a glance. They thought that IV might behelpful in contributing towards this issue.
For geo-spatial libraries, experts in geo-spatial information systems stressed
that the ideal geo-spatial libraries do not only shows the GI data but make it able
to link and correlates the GI data with non-GI data / national service/data (e.g.
economic and social data, census data) in order to assist them in their research.
But in order to do this, it will takes an extensive among of afford by all relevant
agencies (especially owners of the data sets).
Participants of the portal, images and bibliographic focus groups, also
raised the issue of designing applications that show relationships among data,
and these relationships need to be obvious and represented visually.
Zooming was by far the most popular technique applied to the prototypes
followed by dynamaps. Zoom enables users to magnify specific aspects of the
site, whereas dynamaps permits users to manipulate information from a set of
widgets (options) to simultaneously present the data on the interface. The
common ground for both of these techniques is that the user controls the level of
detail that is presented.
Based on the results of the participatory design sessions we can
recommend that the following techniques should be further investigated in
terms of appropriateness, usability and accessibility:
. Portals: dynamaps and zooming.
. Images: graphical interface for DLs, PhotoMesa image browser and
generalized query previews.
. Geospatial: zooming.
. Bibliographical: graphical interface for DLs.
The participatory design method was a cost-effective approach to get
feedback on how IV can be applied to web services. Participants were eager to
provide their views and insights in designing user-friendly IV interfaces.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project was funded by the JISC Information Visualisation Foundation Study
grant.
REFERENCES
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Dr Panayiotis Zaphiris, Centre for HCI Design, City University, London, EC1V
0HB, UK. Tel: '44-(0) 20-7040-8168; Fax: '44-(0) 20-7040-8859. E-mail:
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