Footprints of information foragers: Behaviour semantics of visual exploration

Social navigation exploits the knowledge and experience of peer users of information resources. A wide variety of visual–spatial approaches become increasingly popular as a means to optimize information access as well as to foster and sustain a virtual community among geographically distributed users. An information landscape is among the most appealing design options of representing and communicating the essence of distributed information resources to users. A fundamental and challenging issue is how an information landscape can be designed such that it will not only preserve the essence of the underlying information structure, but also accommodate the diversity of individual users. The majority of research in social navigation has been focusing on how to extract useful information from what is in common between users' profiles, their interests and preferences. In this article, we explore the role of modelling sequential behaviour patterns of users in augmenting social navigation in thematic landscapes. In particular, we compare and analyse the trails of individual users in thematic spaces along with their cognitive ability measures. We are interested in whether such trails can provide useful guidance for social navigation if they are embedded in a visual–spatial environment. Furthermore, we are interested in whether such information can help users to learn from each other, for example, from the ones who have been successful in retrieving documents. In this article, we first describe how users' trails in sessions of an experimental study of visual information retrieval can be characterized by Hidden Markov Models. Trails of users with the most successful retrieval performance are used to estimate parameters of such models. Optimal virtual trails generated from the models are visualized and animated as if they were actual trails of individual users in order to highlight behavioural patterns that may foster social navigation. The findings of the research will provide direct input to the design of social navigation systems as well as to enrich theories of social navigation in a wider context. These findings will lead to the further development and consolidation of a tightly coupled paradigm of spatial, semantic and social navigation

The use of interactive graphical maps for browsing medical/health Internet information resources

As online information portals accumulate metadata descriptions of Web resources, it becomes necessary to develop effective ways for visualising and navigating the resultant huge metadata repositories as well as the different semantic relationships and attributes of described Web resources. Graphical maps provide a good method to visualise, understand and navigate a world that is too large and complex to be seen directly like the Web. Several examples of maps designed as a navigational aid for Web resources are presented in this review with an emphasis on maps of medical and health-related resources. The latter include HealthCyberMap maps , which can be classified as conceptual information space maps, and the very abstract and geometric Visual Net maps of PubMed (for demos). Information resources can be also organised and navigated based on their geographic attributes. Some of the maps presented in this review use a Kohonen Self-Organising Map algorithm, and only HealthCyberMap uses a Geographic Information System to classify Web resource data and render the maps. Maps based on familiar metaphors taken from users' everyday life are much easier to understand. Associative and pictorial map icons that enable instant recognition and comprehension are preferred to geometric ones and are key to successful maps for browsing medical/health Internet information resources

Footprints of information foragers: behaviour semantics of visual exploration

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 57 (2): pp.139-163.Social navigation exploits the knowledge and experience of peer users of information resources. A wide variety of visual–spatial approaches become increasingly popular as a means to optimize information access as well as to foster and sustain a virtual community among geographically distributed users. An information landscape is among the most appealing design options of representing and communicating the essence of distributed information resources to users. A fundamental and challenging issue is how an information landscape can be designed such that it will not only preserve the essence of the underlying information structure, but also accommodate the diversity of individual users. The majority of research in social navigation has been focusing on how to extract useful information from what is in common between users’ profiles, their interests and preferences. In this article, we explore the role of modelling sequential behaviour patterns of users in augmenting social navigation in thematic landscapes. In particular, we compare and analyse the trails of individual users in thematic spaces along with their cognitive ability measures. We are interested in whether such trails can provide useful guidance for social navigation if they are embedded in a visual–spatial environment. Furthermore, we are interested in whether such information can help users to learn from each other, for example, from the ones who have been successful in retrieving documents. In this article, we first describe how users’ trails in sessions of an experimental study of visual information retrieval can be characterized by Hidden Markov Models. Trails of users with the most successful retrieval performance are used to estimate parameters of such models. Optimal virtual trails generated from the models are visualized and animated as if they were actual trails of individual users in order to highlight behavioral patterns that may foster social navigation. The findings of the research will provide direct input to the design of social navigation systems as well as to enrich theories of social navigation in a wider context. These findings will lead to the further development and consolidation of a tightly coupled paradigm of spatial, semantic and social navigation

HealthCyberMap: Mapping the Health Cyberspace Using Hypermedia GIS and Clinical Codes

HealthCyberMap () is a Semantic Web service for healthcare professionals and librarians, patients and the public m general that aims at mappmg parts of medical/ health information resources in cyberspace in novel ways to improve their retrieval and navigation. The Semantic Web ( and ) aims to be the next-generation World Wide Web by giving machine-readable semantics and context to the currently presentation-based Web pages. HealthCyberMap features an unconventional use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to map conceptual spaces occupied by collections of medical/ health information resources. Besides mapping the semantic and non-geographical aspects of these resources using suitable spatial metaphors, HealthCyberMap also collects and maps the geographical provenance of these resources. Some of HealthCyberMap Web interfaces are visual (maps for browsing resources by clinical/ health topic, by provenance and by type), while others are textual (multilingual interfaces for browsing resources by language, and a directory of topical resource categories, besides HealthCyberMap Semantic Subject Search Engine that goes beyond conventional free-text and keyword-based search engines, and supports synonyms, disease variants, subtypes, as well as some semantic relationships between terms). HealthCyberMap adopts a clinical metadata framework built upon a clinical coding scheme (vocabulary or ontology—ICD-9-CM* clinical classification in the current pilot service). Clinical coding schemes serve as a reliable common backbone for topical resource indexing, automated topical classification, topical visualisation and navigation of coded resource pools (using suitable metaphors), and enhanced information retrieval and linking. A resource metadata base based on Dublin Core metadata set with HealthCyberMap’s own extensions holds information about selected high-quality resources. HealthCyberMap then uses GIS spatialisation methods to generate interactive navigational cybermaps from the metadata base. These visual cybermaps are based on familiar metaphors for image-word association to give users a broad overview and understanding of what is available in this complex conceptual space of medical/ health Internet resources and help them navigate it more efficiently and effectively. HealthCyberMap cybermaps can be considered as semantically-spatialised, ontology-based browsing views of the underlying resource metadata base. Using a clinical coding scheme as a metric for spatialisation (“semantic distance”) is unique to HealthCyberMap and is very much suited for the semantic categorisation and navigation of medical/ health Internet information resources. HealthCyberMap also introduces a useful form of cyberspatial analysis for the detection of topical coverage gaps in its resource pool using choropleth (shaded) maps of human body systems. The project features a cost-effective method for serving Web hypermaps with dynamic metadata base drill-down functionality. It also demonstrates the feasibility of Electronic Patient Record to Online Information Services (like HealthCyberMap) Problem to Knowledge Linking using clinical codes as crisp problem-knowledge linkers or knowledge hooks. The Semantic Subject Search Engine queries the same HealthCyberMap resource metadata base. Explicit concepts in resource metadata map onto a brokering domain ontology (ICD-9-CM) allowing the search engine to infer implicit meanings (synonyms and semantic relationships) not directly mentioned in either the resource or its metadata. Similarly, user queries would map to the same ontology allowing the search engine to infer the implicit semantics of user queries and use them to optimise retrieval. A formative evaluation study of HealthCyberMap pilot service using an online user evaluation questionnaire, in addition to analysis of HealthCyberMap server transaction log, has been conducted during the period from 18 April 2002 to 1 June 2002 with very encouraging results. This two-method evaluation approach was guided by methodologies described in NIH Web Site Evaluation and Performance Measures Toolkit among other resources. Many exciting future possibilities have been also investigated by the author, including the further development of HealthCyberMap as a customisable, location-based medical/ health information service

Representing the Semantics of Virtual Spaces

In the StarWalker virtual environment, users explore a shared semantic space and collaborate with concurrent visitors. StarWalker's design illustrates the potential of unifying spatial models, semantic structures, and social navigation metaphors in the development of multiuser virtual environments