Publication Date

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Committee Members

Thomas Wischgoll (Advisor), Michael Raymer (Committee Member), John Gallagher (Committee Member)

Degree Name

Master of Science in Computer Engineering (MSCE)

Abstract

When presented with many search results, finding information or patterns within the data poses a challenge. This thesis presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a visualization enabling users to browse through voluminous information and comprehend the data. Implemented with the JavaScript library Data Driven Documents (D3), the visualization represents the search as clusters of similar documents grouped into bubbles with the contents depicted as word-clouds. Highly interactive features such as touch gestures and intuitive menu actions allow for expeditious exploration of the search results. Other features include drag-and-drop functionality for articles among bubbles, merging nodes, and refining the search by selecting specific terms or articles to receive more similar results. A user study consisting of a survey questionnaire and user tracking data demonstrated that in comparison to a standard text-browser for viewing search results, the visualization performs commensurate or better on most metrics.

Page Count

70

Department or Program

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Year Degree Awarded

2018

ORCID ID

0000-0001-5154-7725


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