Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
3.3
Timeline Mode
Timeline Objects.
Information is often presented in a timeline to make clear their
chronological relationship[14]. By placing events in chronological order (Fig.7, right
side), the order of these events can be clearly recognized, and by comparing this time-
line with other timelines (Fig.7, center), relationships that are hardly noticeable when
individually inspected can be discovered and understood. The length and width of time-
line objects represent duration and number of events, respectively, with beginning times
and dates at the bottom, ends at the top. Timeline mode uses data from Wikipedia.
Executing Timeline Mode.
Clicking a query node in trace mode will display mul-
tiple events related to that query as a timeline object in chronological order. Clicking
on captions in timeline objects will change the chronological table displayed in the in-
formation panel. Adding a new query will create a new query node, and an edge will
extend to related events within the timeline object. Double-clicking captions in timeline
objects will highlight the chronological chart related to the query node (Fig.8).
4
Evaluation Experiment
In order to investigate whether users with niche interests can gain and exchange more
cross-boundary information by using our system, on June 28, 2012, we had 18 subjects
- 13 male and 5 female, aged 22 to 26 - who like rock music search for information in
any way they please for 30 minutes, then answer the questions on the survey provided
on Table.1 from the choices ”1: Strongly disagree, 2: Disagree, 3: Neutral, 4: Agree,
5: Strongly Agree.” Later, we gave them access to our system for 30 minutes, and had
them answer survey questions given on Table.2 to gain their insight. Fig.9 shows the re-
sults of the surveys noted in charts 3 and 4, with the green bars representing traditional
measures of information acquisition, and the orange bars representing acquisition us-
ing the proposed system. The vertical axis shows the average score for each question,
Fig. 5.
Definition of each nodes
Fig. 6.
User interface of trace
mode
Fig. 7.
Timeline objects
Fig. 8.
User interface of time-
line mode
