Spatial Metaphors for Visualizing Information Spaces

Abstract

The growing volume and complexity of the World Wide Web creates a need for new forms of interaction with information. Spatial metaphors have been in the focus of interface research for a number of years. Recently, a related concept called spatialization has emerged as one possible strategy for dealing with modern information glut. However, the term remains ill-defined. We present a definition of spatialization that is based on the notion of information spaces that are non-spatial and high-dimensional. Through spatialization, they are projected into a low-dimensional form and made accessible for visual interpretation. We implement this method to a body of about 100 newspaper articles. Following the extraction of keywords for each article, a multi-step process is applied. It involves the construction of a vector-space model, the computation of a proximity matrix and the projection into two dimensions via multidimensional scaling. The resulting coordinate configuration is imported into Arc View and linked with the keyword list. A number of visualization examples are shown, all based on a representation of each article as a point. One goal of this research i