Bubbleworld : A New Visual Information Retreival Technique

Visualisation has significant advantages over traditional textual lists for improving cognition in information retrieval. To realise these advantages, we identify a set of cognitive principles and usage patterns for information retrieval. We apply these principles and patterns to the design of a prototype visual information retrieval system, Bubbleworld. In Bubbleworld, we apply a variety of visual techniques that successfully transform the internal mental representations of the information retrieval problem to an efficient external view and, through visual cues, provide cognitive amplification at key stages of the information retrieval process. We enhance the knowledge acquisition process by providing query refinement and interaction techniques that facilitate the specification of complex search schemas and integrate these with the mechanisms to incorporate predefined ontological models. We then attempt to validate the new visual techniques through empirical user trials to gain a better understanding of its benefits.