This paper describes a prototype called CoMem (Corporate Memory) that supports the finding and understanding of useful items in large hierarchical repositories. The particular domain is civil engineering design, and the prototype is designed specifically to support design reuse in building construction projects. However, the underlying visualization and interaction principals behind CoMem are generalizable to the ubiquitous task of finding and understanding useful information in large hierarchical repositories. To support the finding, the entire hierarchy is visualized using a squarified treemap. Once an item from the treemap is selected, CoMem supports the understanding of that item by identifying related items in the hierarchy and visualizing the selected item in the context of these related items in a node-link diagram. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of a usability evaluation of CoMem that supports the claim that finding and understanding improve the process of reuse, and that the described visualizations assist with finding and understanding.
CardSKMackinlayJDShneidermanB. Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think.Morgan Kaufmann Publishers: San Francisco, CA, 1999.
2.
PirolliPCardS. Information foraging. Psychological Review1999; 106: 643–675.
3.
PirolliP. Computational models of information scent-following in a very large browsable text collection. Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction Conference on Human factors in computing systems1991; 3–10.
4.
NielsenJ. Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity.New Riders: Indianapolis, IN, 2000.
5.
DanielsonDR. Transitional volatility in web navigation: usability metrics and user behavior. M.Sc. thesis, Stanford University Press, 2002.
6.
CatledgeLDPitkowJE. Characterizing browsing strategies in the World-Wide Web. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems1995; 27: 1065–1073.
7.
DarkenRPSibertJL. A toolkit for navigation in virtual environment. Proceedings of the Sixth Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST)1993; 157–165.
8.
EdsonE. Bibliographic essay: History of cartography. CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries2001; 38: 1899–1909.
9.
HarleyJB In: LaxtonP (Ed). The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography.The John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, MD, 2001.
10.
ShneidermanBWattenbergM. Ordered treemap layouts. Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization2001; 73–78.
11.
FioreASmithMA. Treemap visualizations of newsgroups. Technical Report, Microsoft Research, Microsoft Corporation: Redmond, WA, 2001.
12.
JohnsonBShneidermanB. Treemaps: A space-filling approach to the visualization of hierarchical information structures. In: CardSKMackinlayJDShneidermanB (Eds), Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, 1999.Morgan Kaufmann Publishers: San Francisco, CA, 1991; 152–159.
13.
BrulsDMHuizingKvan WijkJJ. Squarified treemaps. In: de LeeuwWvan LiereR (Eds), Data Visualization 2000, Proceedings of the Second joint Visualization Symposium organized by the Eurographics and the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Visualization and Graphics (TCVG).Springer-Verlag: Vienna, Austria, 1999; 33–42.
14.
WattenbergM. Visualizing the stock market. Proceedings of the ACM Computer Human Interaction (CHI) Conference, Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems1999; 188–189.
15.
ShneidermanBWattenbergM. Ordered treemap layouts. Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization2001; 73–78.
16.
TuroDJohnsonB. Improving the visualization of hierarchies with treemaps: design issues and experimentation. Proceedings of the Third IEEE Conference on Visualization1992; 124–131.
17.
DemianPFruchterR. Measuring relevance in support of design reuse from archives of building product models. ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering2005; 29: 119–136.
18.
ShneidermanB. Dynamic queries for visual information seeking. In: CardSKMackinlayJDShneidermanB (Eds), Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, 1999.Morgan Kaufmann Publishers: San Francisco, CA, 1994; 236–243.
19.
FurnasGW. The FISHEYE view: A new look at structured files. In: CardSKMackinlayJDShneidermanB (Eds), Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, 1999.Morgan Kaufmann Publishers: San Francisco, CA, 1981; 312–330.
20.
RobertsonGGMackinlayJDCardSK. Cone trees: animated 3D visualizations of hierarchical information. Proceedings of the ACM Computer Human Interaction (CHI) Conference, Human Factors in Computing Systems1991; 189–194.
21.
LampingJRaoR. The hyperbolic browser: A Focus+Context technique for visualizing large hierarchies. In: CardSKMackinlayJDShneidermanB (Eds.), Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, 1999.Morgan Kaufmann Publishers: San Francisco, CA, 1995; 382–408.
22.
PerlinKFoxD. Pad: an alternative approach to the computer interface. Proceedings of the Twentieth ACM International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (ACM SIGGRAPH)1993; 57–64.
23.
CombsTBedersonB. Does zooming improve image browsing?Proceedings of the Fourth ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries1999; 130–137.
24.
BedersonBBHollanJDStewartJRogersDDruinAVickD. A zooming web browser. SPIE Multimedia Computing and Networking1996; 2667: 260–271.
25.
BedersonBMeyerJGoodL. Jazz: an extensible zoomable user interface graphics toolkit in Java. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface and Software Technology (UIST)2000; 171–180.
26.
KoikeHYoshiharaH. Fractal approaches for visualizing huge hierarchies. Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages1993; 55–60.
27.
BrinSPageL. The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual web search engine. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems1998; 30: 107–117.
28.
DemianPFruchterR. Usability evaluation of a corporate memory system. Proceedings of the 2005 ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering, 2005.
