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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate four visualizations that represent affective states of students.

An empirical-experimental study approach was used to assess the usability of affective state visualizations in a learning context. The first study was conducted with students who had knowledge of visualization techniques (n=10). The insights from this pilot study were used to improve the interpretability and ease of use of the visualizations. The second study was conducted with the improved visualizations with students who had no or limited knowledge of visualization techniques (n=105).

The results indicate that usability, measured by perceived usefulness and insight, is overall acceptable. However, the findings also suggest that interpretability of some visualizations, in terms of the capability to support emotional awareness, still needs to be improved. The level of students’ awareness of their emotions during learning activities based on the visualization interpretation varied depending on previous knowledge of information visualization techniques. Awareness was found to be high for the most frequently experienced emotions and activities that were the most frustrating, but lower for more complex insights such as interpreting differences with peers. Furthermore, simpler visualizations resulted in better outcomes than more complex techniques.

Detection of affective states of students and visualizations of these states in computer-based learning environments have been proposed to support student awareness and improve learning. However, the evaluation of visualizations of these affective states with students to support awareness in real life settings is an open issue.

Data visualizations in some form or another have served as decision-support tools for many centuries. In conjunction with advancements in information technology, data visualizations have become more accessible and more efficient to generate. In fact, virtually all enterprise resource planning and human resource (HR) information system vendors offer off-the-shelf data visualizations as part of decision-support dashboards as well as stand-alone images and displays for reporting. Plus, advances in programing languages and software such as Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, R, and Python have expanded the possibilities of fully customized graphics. Despite the proliferation of data visualization, relatively little is known about how to design data visualizations for displaying different types of HR data to different user groups, for different purposes, and with the overarching goal of improving the ways in which users comprehend and interpret data visualizations for decision-making purposes. To understand the state of science and practice as they relate to HR data visualizations and data visualizations in general, we review the literature on data visualizations across disciplines and offer an organizing framework that emphasizes the roles data visualization characteristics (e.g., display type, features), user characteristics (e.g., experience, individual differences), tasks, and objectives (e.g., compare values) play in user comprehension, interpretation, and decision-making. Finally, we close by proposing future directions for science and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the development of definitional standards for research information as a wicked problem. A central solution strategy for such problems, increasing transparency by argumentation visualisation, is being evaluated.

Qualitative formal content analysis is used in order to examine whether the process of definition standardisation in the project can be characterised as a wicked problem. Action Research is used to assess the effect of argumentation visualisation in the project.

The results of the content analysis confirm the interpretation of the standardisation process as a wicked problem. The implementation of argumentation visualisation shows to increase the meetings’ focus and effectiveness.

The relationship between information exchange, transparency and acceptance of the development result should be addressed in future empirical analyses. Visualisation solutions require further development in order to accommodate needs of the stakeholders.

Argumentation visualisation is of high value for finding a consensus for definitional standards and should be considered for managing and exchanging information.

Applying solution strategies from design research on wicked problems to large-scale standardisation efforts opens up new possibilities for not only handling such projects but also providing new avenues of research for both the design and research information communities.

Modern Web browsers all provide a history function that allows users to see a list of URLs they have visited in chronological order. The history log contains rich information but is seldom used because of the tedious nature of scrolling through long lists. This paper aims to propose a new way to improve users’ Web browsing experience by analyzing, clustering and visualizing their browsing history.

The authors developed a system called Personal Web Library to help users develop awareness of and understand their Web browsing patterns, identify their topics of interest and retrieve previously visited Web pages more easily.

User testing showed that this system is usable and attractive. It found that users can easily see patterns and trends at different time granularities, recall pages from the past and understand the local context of a browsing session. Its flexibility provides users with much more information than the traditional history function in modern Web browsers. Participants in the study gained an improved awareness of their Web browsing patterns. Participants mentioned that they were willing to improve their time management after viewing their browsing patterns.

As more and more daily activities rely on the internet and Web browsers, browsing data captures a large part of users’ lives. Providing users with interactive visualizations of their browsing history can facilitate personal information management, time management and other meta-level activities.

This paper aims to help users gain insights into and improve their Web browsing experience, the authors hope that the work they conducted can spur more research contributions in this underdeveloped yet important area.

The authors introduce two semantics-based navigation applications that facilitate information-seeking activities in internal link-based web sites in Wikipedia. These applications aim to help users find concepts within a topic and related articles on a given topic quickly and then gain topical knowledge from internal link-based encyclopedia web sites. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The WNavi s application consists of three information visualization (IV) tools which are a topic network, a hierarchy topic tree and summaries for topics. The WikiMap application consists of a topic network. The goal of the topic network and topic tree tools is to help users to find the major concepts of a topic and identify relationships between these major concepts easily. In addition, in order to locate specific information and enable users to explore and read topic-related articles quickly, the topic tree and summaries for topics tools support users to gain topical knowledge quickly. The authors then apply the k-clique of cohesive indicator to analyze the sub topics of the seed query and find out the best clustering results via the cosine measure. The authors utilize four metrics, which are correctness, time cost, usage behaviors, and satisfaction, to evaluate the three interfaces. These metrics measure both the outputs and outcomes of applications. As a baseline system for evaluation the authors used a traditional Wikipedia interface. For the evaluation, the authors used an experimental user study with 30 participants.

The results indicate that both WikiMap and WNavi s supported users to identify concepts and their relations better compared to the baseline. In topical tasks WNavi s over performed both WikiMap and the baseline system. Although there were no time differences in finding concepts or answering topical questions, the test systems provided users with a greater gain per time unit. The users of WNavi s leaned on the hierarchy tree instead of other tools, whereas WikiMap users used the topic map.

The findings have implications for the design of IR support tools in knowledge-intensive web sites that help users to explore topics and concepts.

The authors explored to what extent the use of each IV support tool contributed to successful exploration of topics in search tasks. The authors propose extended task-based evaluation measures to understand how each application provides useful context for users to accomplish the tasks and attain the search goals. That is, the authors not only evaluate the output of the search results, e.g. the number of relevant items retrieved, but also the outcome provided by the system for assisting users to attain the search goal.

This paper aims to present an overview of the challenges encountered in integrating visual search interfaces into digital libraries and repositories. These challenges come in various forms, including information visualisation, the use of knowledge organisation systems and metadata quality. The main purpose of this study is the identification of criteria for the evaluation and integration of visual search interfaces, proposing guidelines and recommendations to improve information retrieval tasks with emphasis on the education-al context.

The information included in this study was collected based on a systematic literature review approach. The main information sources were explored in several digital libraries, including Science Direct, Scopus, ACM and IEEE, and include journal articles, conference proceedings, books, European project reports and deliverables and PhD theses published in an electronic format. A total of 142 studies comprised the review.

There are several issues that authors did not fully discuss in this literature review study; more specific, aspects associated with access of digital resources in digital libraries and repositories based on human computer interaction, i.e. usability and learnability of user interfaces; design of a suitable navigation method of search based on simple knowledge organisation schemes; and the use of usefulness of visual search interfaces to locate relevant resources.

The main steps for carrying out a systematic review are drawn from health care; this methodology is not commonly used in fields such as digital libraries and repositories. The authors aimed to apply the fundamentals of the systematic literature review methodology considering the context of this study. Additionally, there are several aspects of accessibility that were not considered in the study, such as accessibility to content for disabled people as defined by ISO/IEC 40500:2012.

No other systematic literature reviews have been conducted in this field. The research presents an in-depth analysis of the criteria associated with searching and navigation methods based on the systematic literature review approach. The analysis is relevant for researchers in the field of digital library and repository creation in that it may direct them to considerations in designing and implementing visual search interfaces based on the use of information visualisation.

The purpose of this paper is to study suitable visualization techniques representing Qur'an history and atlas. It focuses on analyzing the effectiveness of the concept map and the hyperbolic tree visualization techniques.

The effectiveness is measured in the aspects of the task time to complete a search based on questions provided. The task time is predicted using a task analysis technique called keystroke level model – goal operator methods and selection rules (KLM-GOMS). It is suitable to produce the hypothesis of which visualization techniques are able to maneuver the users to complete the task goals in the shortest time. The scope presented is the histories and locations related to selected chapters in part 30 of the Qur'an.

Hyperbolic tree is more time effective compared with concept map visualization technique. Concept map visualization system has been voted as the most satisfying visualization technique even though the difference is only 1.3 seconds. The more important aspect for this analysis is the presentation of the information. Information should be presented clearly rather than hidden although the hidden function should be provided for users to use. However, both techniques are predicted to support conceptual understanding.

The focus of the analysis was data structure and how to get to the right nodes before retrieving the final output.

Assisting developers of Qur'anic systems therefore improves the effectiveness of users of Qur'anic system in finding information.

Analysis on visualization techniques in context Qur'an history and atlas using KLM-GOMS study in terms of locations that lead to the birth of various chapters in Qur'an is rarely being discussed. Previous studies focus on development and implementation of textual Qur'an systems while this study focuses on user analysis using techniques mentioned above.

By providing interoperability users can be supported in sharing and reusing vocabularies and knowledge. Ontology alignment plays an important role in the context of semantic interoperability. Usually ontology alignment tools generate results that are difficult to understand or assess. In order to enable users to check and improve alignment results and to understand their consequences information visualization techniques are used. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relevant quality aspects in ontology alignment as well as current activities and available tools.

Based on a literature study quality measures for ontology alignment identified and requirements for visual ontology alignment are defined. As a proof of concepts a prototype called AlViz was developed.

Information visualization offers appropriate methods for the assessment of ontology alignment results. Different levels of detail and overview help users to navigate and understand the alignments. The assessment of semi‐structured resources by users involves learning activities. The neighborhood of the entity under investigation bears relevant semantic information. Therefore, assessment may include crisscrossing acquisition of knowledge representations and their semantics.

Along a comprehensive framework alignment assessment tasks are identified and visualization tool is introduced and applied which aims at making ontology alignment results manageable and comprehensible.

Managing a project involves taking a number of critical decisions that can have a crucial impact on the success or failure of the initiative. The analytical definition and visualization of the main components of a project can support project managers engaged to address the right issues at the right time. This article aims to identify crucial crossroads in the management of a project and to provide a visual representation of knowledge involved into a system of project components and decisions.

A design science process is adopted to define the initial goals and requirements and to develop the knowledge visualization framework. Expert feedback is also gathered to obtain a preliminary validation of the framework.

Moving from a system view of project dimensions, we identify eight types of strategic decisions, i.e. growth, problem shifting, goals balancing, escalation, rewarding, resource allocation, problem fixing and cooperation. We then present a visualization map of project decision making addressing six categories of knowledge (i.e. “what-knowledge”, “how-knowledge”, “who-knowledge”, “why-knowledge”, “what for-knowledge”, “when-knowledge”).

The framework needs further theoretical refinement in terms of more fine-grained decision types, other determinants and the reciprocal influence in the management of project activities.

The article can support project managers attempting to build a comprehensive view of project decisions, and it can be a basis to develop novel types of knowledge management systems for project-related applications.

The article proposes a new approach to sustain strategic decision making in project management by adopting a knowledge visualization view. Moreover, it provides an operational tool for managers and analysts at different levels engaged into the management of a project.

HotMap web search was designed to support exploratory search tasks by adding lightweight visual and interactive features to the commonly used list‐based representation of web search results. Although laboratory user studies are the most common method for empirically validating the utility of information visualization and information retrieval systems such as this, it is difficult to determine if such studies accurately reflect the tasks of real users. This paper aims to address these issues.

A longitudinal user evaluation was conducted in two phases over a ten‐week period to determine how this novel web search interface was being used and accepted in real‐world settings.

Although the interactive features were not used as extensively as expected, there is evidence that the participants did find them useful. Participants were able to refine their queries easily, although most did so manually. Those that used the interactive exploration features were able to effectively discover potentially relevant documents buried deep in the search results list. Subjective reactions regarding the usefulness and ease‐of‐use of the system were positive, and more than half of the participants continued to use the system even after the study ended.

As a result of conducting this longitudinal study, the author has gained a deeper understanding of how a particular visual and interactive web search interface is being used in the real world, as well as issues associated with resistance to change. These findings may provide guidance for the design, development, and study of next generation interfaces for online information retrieval.