CPSC 533 C Information Visualization Project Presentation Music

CPSC 533 C Information Visualization Project Presentation Music. Land: Exploratory Browsing in Music Space Heidi Lam December 15, 2004

Agenda • Motivation: Exploratory browsing? • The ideal infovis solution: what should it be? • Music. Land: my proposed solution – Visualization features – Demo – Evaluation – Future Work

Project Idea • How can computer tools/interfaces better support exploratory browsing? • What is exploratory browsing?

Two Scenarios at an Online Store 1. Find/Search: Looking for Ray Charles’ “The Spirit of Christmas” with using the store’s search tools, and input terms: “Ray Charles” and “spirit of Christmas” 2. Exploratory Browsing: Browsing at the “Classical” section Came across a Jazzified version of Bach Go to the “Jazz” section Ray Charles’ Christmas album is being advertised

Two Scenarios at an Online Store The goals and assumptions of these scenarios are different: • With find/search: – with clear and precise targets – want to find the target as quickly as possible • With exploratory browsing: – need multiple queries to refine/define target – getting there is half of the fun/work?

Project Motivation Exploratory browsing is not well supported by current search tools… To better support exploratory browsing, the interface should … 1. Provide context: to allow users to interpret the query results based on their input terms what am I looking at? 2. Guide navigation: going from the familiar to the unfamiliar Given where I have been, where should I go next? 3. Assist refinement of target: based on retrieved results and query terms what can I look for next?

Music. Land—Overall View

Music. Land—Query Display Arranges query results as a rectangularized Venn diagram • to put results in context of query terms • to relate neigbouring regions by a query term • Colour-coding the single term regions with primary colours, and the intersected areas with a mix of those colours • Perceptual Layering to indicate the relative importance of each result region

Music. Land—Semantic Zooming To increase display capacity Zoom – Full (artist, title, genre, style) – Partial (artist, title) – Minimal (artist) – Nil (number of results)

Music. Land—New Query select new terms • Select record of interest brings up a list of selectable attributes • New query is an “extension” of old, linked by line, colour, and position • Old unused query regions fade and desize: Time metaphor

Demo

Music. Land—Evaluation Based on a 2 -participant formative evaluation Strengths: • Interprets query results in context • Provides of possible query term choices • Guides towards future queries with history • Fades and desizes unused query regions Looks like Music. Land has largely achieved its design goals : o)

Music. Land—Evaluation Weaknesses (Participants’ List): • No album details • Asymmetry of query term display • No indication of new query terms in new query • No Previews/Closing of query displays Weaknesses (My list): • Scalability • Perceptual layering • Colour fading

Music. Land—Lessons Learned • The importance of prototyping • Colour is difficult • Providing context and details has a price in scalability

Music. Land—Future Work • Improve usability based on participants’ comments • Launch and play the music albums • Conduct usability study to verify the design principles behind Music. Land, and to study exploratory browsing

Conclusion • Music. Land is a tool designed to support exploratory browsing … – Displays retrieved results in a rectangularized Venn diagram to cluster results and to provide query terms as context – Guides refinement of queries by providing a selectable list of attributes based on user’s current album of interest – Anchors and guides new query formation by providing a history • Formative study with encouraging results

Questions