Cognitive Foundations for Visual Analytics

In this report, we provide an overview of scientific/technical literature on information visualization and VA. Topics discussed include an update and overview of the extensive literature search conducted for this study, the nature and purpose of the field, major research thrusts, and scientific foundations. We review methodologies for evaluating and measuring the impact of VA technologies as well as taxonomies that have been proposed for various purposes to support the VA community. A cognitive science perspective underlies each of these discussions

Computational Intelligence and Human- Computer Interaction: Modern Methods and Applications

The present book contains all of the articles that were accepted and published in the Special Issue of MDPI’s journal Mathematics titled "Computational Intelligence and Human–Computer Interaction: Modern Methods and Applications". This Special Issue covered a wide range of topics connected to the theory and application of different computational intelligence techniques to the domain of human–computer interaction, such as automatic speech recognition, speech processing and analysis, virtual reality, emotion-aware applications, digital storytelling, natural language processing, smart cars and devices, and online learning. We hope that this book will be interesting and useful for those working in various areas of artificial intelligence, human–computer interaction, and software engineering as well as for those who are interested in how these domains are connected in real-life situations

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Design and Evaluation of User Interfaces for Mobile Web Search

Mobiili tiedonhaku on jatkuvasti kasvava ja monimuotoistuva osa jokapäiväistä tiedonhankintaa. Aikaisemman tutkimuksen mukaan tarvitaan kuitenkin parempia käyttöliittymäratkaisuja tukemaan mobiililaitteilla tapahtuvaa verkkotiedonhakua. Väitöskirjatutkimuksessa suunniteltiin ja toteutettiin kaksi uutta hakukäyttöliittymää, joita arvioitiin käyttäjätutkimuksissa. Ensimmäinen käyttöliittymä perustuu siihen, että hakutulokset luokitellaan ryhmiin niissä esiintyvien avainsanojen perusteella. Käyttäjätutkimusten tulokset osoittavat, että luokittelulla voidaan tukea mobiilikäyttäjien tutkivaa tiedonhakua. Toinen käyttöliittymä antaa hakutulosten yhteydessä yleiskuvan hakulauseen sijaintikohdista tulosdokumenteissa. Vaikkakin menetelmän käyttö vaatii opettelua, käyttäjäarviot osoittavat että se voi auttaa sivuuttamaan huonot hakutulokset, etenkin silloin kun muut hakutulosta kuvaavat tiedot ovat epäselviä. Lisäksi väitöskirjassa tutkittiin aktiivisten mobiili-Internetin käyttäjien tiedontarpeita verkkotiedonhaun käytön ymmärtämiseksi. Tutkimustulosten mukaan hakujen tekeminen ja verkon selaaminen ovat näiden käyttäjien tärkeimpiä tiedonhankintatapoja. Niillä pyritään vastaamaan tiedontarpeisiin heti niiden ilmaantuessa, olipa käyttäjä sitten kotona, liikkeessä tai sosiaalisessa vuorovaikutustilanteessa. Mobiili tiedonhankinta on vahvasti sidoksissa käyttötilanteeseen, mikä tulee huomioida hakukäyttöliittymien suunnittelussa. Tulevaisuuden hakukäyttöliittymät voivat esimerkiksi tukea tiedonhankintaa hyödyntämällä tietoa käyttäjän sijainnista ja aktiviteeteista. Myös epämuodollisten ja tutkivien tiedontarpeiden kasvava rooli asettaa uusia haasteita vuorovaikutuksen suunnittelulle.Mobile Web search is a rapidly growing information seeking activity employed across different locations, situations, and activities. Current mobile search interfaces are based on the ranked result list, dominant in desktop interfaces. Research suggests that new paradigms are needed for better support of mobile searchers. For this dissertation, two such novel search interface techniques were designed, implemented, and evaluated. The first method, a clustering search interface that presents a category- based overview of the results, was studied both in a task-based experiment in a laboratory setting and in a longitudinal field study wherein it was used to address real information needs. The results indicate that clustering can support exploratory search needs when the searcher has trouble defining the information need, requires an overview of the search topic, or is interested in multiple results related to the same topic. The findings informed design guidelines for category-based search interfaces. How and when categorization is presented in the search interface needs to be carefully considered. Categorization methods should be improved, for better response to diverse information needs. Hybrid approaches employing contextually informed clustering, classification, and faceted browsing may offer the best match for user needs. The second presentation method, a visualization of the occurrences of the user s query phrase in a result document, can be incorporated into the ranked result list as an additional, unobtrusive result descriptor. It allows the searcher to see how often the query phrase appears in the result document, enabling the use of various evaluation strategies to assess the relevance of the results. Several iterations of the visualization were studied with users to form an understanding of the potential of this approach. The results suggest that a novel visualization can be useful in ruling out non-relevant results and can assist when the other result descriptors do not provide for a conclusive relevance assessment. However, users familiarity with well-established result descriptors means that users have to learn how to integrate the visualization into their search strategies and reconcile situations in which the visualization is in conflict with other metadata. In addition, the contextual triggers and information behaviors of mobile Internet users were studied, for understanding of the role of Web search as a mobile information seeking activity. The results from this study show that mobile Web search and browsing are important information seeking activities. They are engaged in to resolve emerging information needs as they appear, whether at home, on the go, or in social situations

Gestión de colecciones digitales con esquemas de catalogación reconfigurables

Agradezco el apoyo recibido durante estos años por parte de todos los miembros de mi grupo de investigación ILSA en la Facultad de Informática de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. También a los grupos de investigación LEETHI y LOEP pertenecientes también a la Universidad Complutense, y a la Fundación El Caño de Panamá, sin los que no habría podido realizar parte de los experimentos expuestos en los trabajos.A título personal, deseo agradecer a mis directores José Luis Sierra, Ana Fernández-Pampillón, Antonio Sarasa, y compañeros de grupo de investigación Alfredo Fernández Valmayor, Daniel Rodríguez, Bryan Temprado y César Ruiz por darme la oportunidad de desarrollar estos años de investigación con ellos sobre este campo, esfuerzo que concluye en esta tesis, y por todo lo que me han enseñado sobre cómo ser un buen investigador.Dentro de la universidad también deseo dar las gracias a mis compañeros del “Aula16”: Toni, Dan, Iván, Víctor, Jesús, Pablo, Cristina y Marta con los que he compartido muchas comidas, y cafés, a lo largo de estos años divagando sobre informática. También quiero dar las gracias a mis actuales compañeros del “420bip”: Susana, Vicky, Carlos y Noelia, que me han visto dando los últimos remates estos meses a esta tesis y me han ayudado en todo lo que han podido..

Enhancing the Communication of Law: a cross-disciplinary investigation applying information technology

Law is pervasive in culture. It is a form of communication between government and citizens. When effective, it is a tool of government policy. If poorly designed,law results in unnecessary costs to society. Impediments to understanding of the law limits and distorts democratic participation. Yet, historically, the law has been inaccessible to most. Thus enhancing the communication of law is an important and standing problem. Much work has been done (for example through the plain language movement) to improve the communication of law. Nonetheless, the law remains largely unreadable to non-legal users. This thesis applies information technology to investigate and enhance the communication of law. To this end, this thesis focusses on four main areas.To improve the readability of law, it must be better described as a form of language. Corpus linguistics is applied for this purpose. A linguistic description of contract language arose from this work, which, along with the corpus itself, has been made available to the research community. The thesis also describes work for the automatic classification of text in legal contracts by legal function.Reliable measures for the readability of law are needed, but they do not exist. To develop such measures, gold standard data is needed to evaluate possible measures.To create this gold standard data, the research engaged citizen scientists, in the form of the online “crowd”. However, methods for creating and using such user assessments for readability are rudimentary. The research therefore investigated,developed and applied a number of methods for collecting user ratings of readability in an online environment. Also, the research applied machine learning to investigate and identify linguistic factors that are specifically associated with language difficulty of legislative sentences. This resulted in recommendations for improving legislative readability. A parallel line of investigation concerned the application of visualization to enhance the communication of law. Visualization engages human visual perception and its parallel processing capacities for the communication of law. The research applied computational tools: natural language processing, graph characteristics and data driven algorithms. It resulted in prototype tools for automatically visualizing definition networks and automating the visualization of selected contract clauses. Also, the work has fostered an investigation of the nature of law itself. A “law as” framework is used to query the nature of law and illuminate law in new ways. The framework is re-assessed as a tool for the experimental investigation of law. This results in an enhanced description of law, applying a number of investigatory frames:law; communication; document; information; computation; design and complex systems theory. It also provides a contrastive study with traditional theories of law - demonstrating how traditional theories can be extended in the light of these multidisciplinary results. In sum, this thesis reports a body of work advancing the existing knowledge base and state of the art in respect of application of computational techniques to enhancing the communication of law

Distributed collaborative structuring

Making Inter- and Intranet resources available in a structured way is one of the most important and challenging problems today. An underlying structure allows users to search for information, documents or relationships without a clearly defined information need. While search and filtering technology is becoming more and more powerful, the development of such explorative access methods lacks behind. This work is concerned with the development of large-scale data mining methods that allow to structure information spaces based on loosely coupled user annotations and navigation patterns. An essential challenge, that was not yet fully realized in this context, is heterogeneity. Different users and user groups often have different preferences and needs on how to access an information collection. While current Business Intelligence, Information Retrieval or Content Management solutions allow for a certain degree of personalization, these approaches are still very static. This considerably limits their applicability in heterogeneous environments. This work is based on a novel paradigm, called collaborative structuring. This term is chosen as a generalization to the term collaborative filtering. Instead of only filtering items, collaborative structuring allows users to organize information spaces in a loosely coupled way, based on patterns emerging through data mining. A first contribution of the work is to define the conceptual notion of collaborative structuring as combinatorial optimization problem and to put it into relation with existing research in the areas of data and web mining. As second contribution, highly scalable, distributed optimization strategies are proposed and analyzed. Finally, the proposed approaches are quantitatively evaluated against existing methods using several real-world data sets. Also, practical experience from two application areas is given, namely information access for heterogeneous expert communities and collaborative media organization

CLARIN

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure – CLARIN – for the humanities. It covers a broad range of CLARIN language resources and services, its underlying technological infrastructure, the achievements of national consortia, and challenges that CLARIN will tackle in the future. The book is published 10 years after establishing CLARIN as an Europ. Research Infrastructure Consortium