Developing an Information Space for Enhancing the Exploration of an Unfamiliar Collection of Scientific Literature Diploma Thesis

In this thesis I try to answer the question of how information spaces can be designed so that they support humans in the exploration of a large set of scientific literature items. I will argue that the degree of support increases if the spatial representation assembles the mental representation of a certain spectator. In this regard, I will illustrate how humans build such mental representations and reason why it is necessary to include an idiosyncratic hierarchy for each spectator. Starting from these theoretical fundamentals, Iwill present an approach of howmental structures and processes can be represented in the computational domain. This approach is realized in an application for exploring a collection of scientific literature. The resulting application is then evaluated by testing whether it maps the information from a hierarchy to a visual display.