Modern Information Retrieval Chapter 10: User Interfaces and Visualization

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3. SeeSoft

retrieval results!SeeSoft SeeSoft

The SeeSoft visualization [#!eick94!#] represents text in a manner resembling columns of newspaper text, with one `line' of text on each horizontal line of the strip. (See Figure .) The representation is compact and aesthetically pleasing. Graphics are used to abstract away the details, providing an overview showing the amount and shape of the text. Color highlighting is used to pick out various attributes, such as where a particular word appears in the text. Details of a smaller portion of the display can be viewed via a pop-up window; the overview shows more of the text but in less detail.

  

Figure: An example of the SeeSoft visualization for showing locations of characters within a text [#!eick94!#].

SeeSoft was originally designed for software development, in which a line of text is a meaningful unit of information. (Programmers tend to place each individual programming statement on one line of text.) Thus SeeSoft shows attributes relevant to the programming domain, such as which lines of code were modified by which programmer, and how often particular lines have been modified, and how many days have elapsed since the lines were last modified. The SeeSoft developers then experimented with applying this idea to the display of text, although this has not been integrated into an information access system. Color highlighting is used to show which characters appear where in a book of fiction, and which passages of the Bible contain references to particular people and items. Note the use of the abstraction of an entire line to stand for a single word such as a character's name (even though though this might obscure a tightly interwoven conversation between two characters).