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This paper aims to explore the preferable manner for visualizing different product regulations to be used in the training of and communication between people working at different levels in the production process. Many organizations struggle to communicate important and compulsory regulations, but the intended users are often reluctant to use them.

The study has an action research approach, and the visualized regulations were the result of a human-centered design process that considered aspects for successful organizational change.

The action research approach proved to be a successful framework to design the transformation of well-constructed illustrations in interactive guides, communicate and convince managers and users of the potential of the concept, develop a number of different well-functioning guides and establish regulations with illustrative elements and interactivity in a long-term perspective of an organization.

Further research is needed to follow-up the usage of visualized regulations to clarify how communication and quality are supported in design and production processes.

The study shows how different product regulations should be visualized and established in an organization, with a potential for further dissemination. It is likely that the approach to design and visualize regulations in this study can function in other branches.

The study finds a preferable manner for visualizing different product regulations to be used in the training of and communication between people working at different levels in the production process.

Graphic-based tag clouds aim to visually represent tag content and tag structure, and then to better represent tagged information for later search. However, few studies have clarified the features among varied visualization approaches involved in graphic-based tag clouds and compared them for the purpose of information search.

After reviewing four kinds of graphic-based tag clouds, an experimental demonstration was conducted in our study to verify how user performs in information search for a general seeking task by using them. Precision ratio, recall ratio, clicks on search and time for search were four variables tested in the experiment. Also, two supplementary tests were respectively carried out to manifest how graphic-based tag clouds contributed to the identification of target tags and tag clusters.

The experimental results showed that compared to tag content visual tag structure was more important to find related tags from tag clouds for information search. In addition, tag clouds that visually represented the semantic relationships within tags could make user more confident about their search result and carry out a shorter learning process during searching, which signified a tag-based information search path when visual elements were applied.

This research is one of the first to illustrate systematically the graphic-based tag clouds and their impacts on information search. The research findings could suggest on how to build up more effective and interactive tag clouds and make proposition for the design of search user interface by using graphic-based tag clouds.

Personal projects are any kind of projects whose management is left to an individual untrained in project management and is greatly influenced by this individual’s personal touch. This includes the majority of knowledge workers who daily manage information relating to several personal projects. The authors have conducted an in-depth qualitative investigation on information management of such projects and the tacit knowledge behind its processes that cannot be found in the organisational structures of current personal information management (PIM) tools (file managers, e-mail clients, web browsers). The purpose of this paper is to reveal and understand project information management practices in details and provide guidelines for personal project management tools.

Semi-structured interviews similar to that in several other PIM exploratory studies were carried out focusing on project fragmentation, information overlap and project context recreation. In addition, the authors enhanced interviews with sketching approach not yet used to study PIM. Sketches were used for articulating things that were not easily expressed through words, they represented a time stamp of a project context in the projects’ lifetime, uncovered additional tacit knowledge behind project information management not mentioned during the interviews, and were also used to find what they have in common which might be used in prototype designing.

The paper presents first personal project definition based on the conceptualisations derived from the study. The study revealed that the extensive information fragmentation in the file hierarchy (due to different organisational needs and ease of information access) poses a significant challenge to context recreation besides cross-tool fragmentation so far described in the literature. The study also reveals the division of project information into core and support and emphasises the importance of support information in relation to project goals. Other findings uncover the division of input/output information, project overlaps through information reuse, storytelling and visualising information relations, which could help with user modelling and enhancing project context recreation.

On of the limitations is the group of participants that cannot represent the ideally generalised knowledge worker as there are many different kinds of knowledge workers and they all have different information needs besides different management practices. However, participants of variety of different backgrounds were observed and the authors converged observations into points of project information management similarities across the spectrum of different professions. Nevertheless, its observations and conceptualisations should be repeatable. For one, some of the issues that emerged during this work have been to different extents discussed in other studies.

The empirical findings are used to create guidelines for designing personal project information management tools: support the selective focus on information with the division into core and supportive information; visualise changes in project information space to support narratives for context recreation; overcome fragmentation in the file system with selective unification; visualising project’s information relationship to better understand the complexity of project information space; and support navigating in project information space on two axes: time and between projects (overlaps through information).

The study presents a longitudinal insight into personal project information management. As such it provides a first formal definition of personal project from the information point of view. The method used in the study presented uses a new approach – sketching in which participants externalised and visualised personal information and projects they discussed. The insights derived from the study form design implications for personal project management tools for knowledge workers.

The possibility of integrating building information in an augmented reality (AR) environment provides an effective solution to all phases of a building's lifecycle. This paper explores the integration of building information modelling (BIM) and AR to effectively visualise building information models in an AR environment and evaluates the currently available AR tools.

A BIM model of a selected office room was created and superimposed to the actual physical space using two different AR devices and four different AR applications. The superimposing techniques, accuracy and the level of information that can be visualised were then investigated by performing a walk-through analysis.

From the investigation, it can be concluded that model positioning can be inaccurate depending on the superimposing method used and the AR device. Moreover, using the currently available techniques, only static building information can be superimposed and visualised in AR, showing a need to integrate data from Internet of Things (IoT) sensors into the current BIM-AR processes to allow visualisation of accurate and high-quality operational building information.

A practical process and method for visualising and superimposing BIM models in an AR environment have been described. Recommendations to improve superimposing accuracy are provided. The assessment of type, quality and level of detail that can be visualised indicates the areas that need improvement to increase the effectiveness of building information's visualisation in AR.

To provide a new generic model equipped with a “process visualizing” feature by capturing RFID logistics data to represent different logistics processes' status, and sharing them through web‐based technology to supply chain parties.

In order to provide logistics service companies an effective way to manage their logistics processes and help both the up and down stream supply chain parties maximize their activities linkage within the value chain, the proposed system integrates radio frequency identification (RFID) and IT applications to optimize information flow in a supply chain. In doing so, the objective of visualizing logistics process is achieved.

It is found that the proposed model enhanced the performance of third party logistics providers and their supply chain partners in three main areas. They include a significant reduction in inventory level, a substantial drop in the chance of out‐of‐stock and, a significant improvement in the efficiency of delivery. They are among the most critical problems that often exist in a supply chain.

The proposed model requires supply chain participants to share their process data on the web environment so as to achieve the target of collaboration. This demands the need of tight security control over the public internet.

This paper provides useful information and practical guidance for supply chain participants to formulate a “process visualizing featured” information system.

This paper provides a solution to solve common supply chain management problems and offers practical helps to supply chain participants effectively.

In this design case, a participatory approach to visualizing a complex computational pipeline was adopted, with the goal of exploring what benefits might be derived when groups of people visualize complex information for themselves.

Several visualization artifacts were developed to support collaborative process at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). Researchers adopted a participatory approach, engaging directly in LIGO activities and drawing together explicitly codified data from the LIGO computational pipeline as well as structural knowledge tacitly held by project scientists. Both sources of information were critical to producing meaningful visualizations and progressing design and research efforts.

This design case revealed several benefits realized when individuals or groups visualize information for themselves, especially improved communication and enhanced understanding of complex systems of information.

This design case demonstrates how cooperatively creating visualizations can enhance understanding and support group activities and goals. It is also a call to move beyond data, technologies, and techniques to introduce more human‐centered approaches within visualization scholarship.

This investigation tested the designer assumption that VIBE is a tool for an expert user and asked: what are the effects of user expertise on usability when VIBE's non‐traditional interface is compared with a more traditional text‐based interface? Three user groups – novices, online searching experts, and VIBE system experts – totaling 31 participants, were asked to use and compare VIBE to a more traditional text‐based system, askSam. No significant differences were found; however, significant performance differences were found for some tasks on the two systems. Participants understood the basic principles underlying VIBE although they generally favored the askSam system. The findings suggest that VIBE is a learnable system and its components have pragmatic application to the development of visualized information retrieval systems. Further research is recommended to maximize the retrieval potential of IR visualization systems.

This paper aims to better understand how an accounting information system (AIS), working as a multidimensional knowledge object, engages users in a new round of knowledge development which allows them to explore new managerial directions. Drawing on the concept of the knowledge object and the knowing in practice perspective, this study considers the relationships between subjects and objects in the explication of accounting practice, underlining how AIS could become a knowledge object that can assume a variety of forms, starting from such contradictions emerging from practice.

Theoretical argumentations are applied to a case study at a global logistics provider in the South of Italy, which manages the supply chain from origin to destination, offering a multitude of services in the transport and distribution sector.

The case study shows that the process of knowledge accumulation promotes the mutation of AIS into a knowledge object that, in its variety of forms, allows managers to explore new managerial directions such as the reorganization of warehouse activities.

The paper seeks to enrich the interpretation of AIS as a multidimensional knowledge object becoming a catalyst of new managerial directions through knowing. That helps to understand the role of accounting tools as a social practice supporting decision-making and how accounting systems’ openness and questioning nature makes them objects of enquiry able to support the identification of new managerial directions and lead the AIS to continually explode and mutate into something else.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how research within the railway sector is developing eMaintenance solutions using the cloud and web-based applications for improved condition monitoring, better maintenance and increased uptime. This eMaintenance solution is based on the on-line data acquisition, integration and analysis leading to effective maintenance decision making.

In the proposed methodology, data are acquired from railway measurement stations to the eMaintenance cloud, where they are filtered, fused, integrated and analysed to assist maintenance decisions. Extensive consultation with stakeholders has resulted in the analysis of railway data.

The paper provides a concept for a web-based eMaintenance solution for railway maintenance stakeholders for making fact-based decisions and develops more efficient and economically sound maintenance policies. Train wheels reaching their maintenance and safety limits are visualised in grids and graphs to assist stakeholders in making the appropriate maintenance decisions.

In this paper the authors have demonstrated that the wheel profile and force data can be remotely collected through cloud utilisation. The information generated can be used for maintenance decision making. Similarly, other measurable data can also be utilised for maintenance decision making.

This paper describes the importance of eMaintenance solution through online data analysis to make effective and efficient railway maintenance decisions, as a case study.

The purpose of this paper is to report findings from an investigation into the conceptions and characteristics of geo/spatial information (GI) to demonstrate how exploring academics and students' conceptions of GI facilitated illumination of information literacy (IL) in the Geographic Information Science/Systems (GIS) discipline.

Adopting an embedded exploratory case study, the data were gathered from semi‐structured interviews, an open‐ended questionnaire and students' reflection in an online distance learning (ODL) GIS programme. The data were analysed in light of the Grounded Theory approach. Drawing on the conceptions of GI which emerged from the study, this paper highlights several characteristics of GI and discusses their implications for IL. In particular, it compares the emergent IL competencies in the GIS discipline with those in the SCONUL model.

GI was identified as geo/spatial, temporal, geo/spatially contextualised, and geo/spatially technology‐mediated. According to these conceptions, GI is a constructive concept; it has multiple components which need various operations and user inputs to become geo/spatially meaningful and usable. These characteristics uncovered new aspects of IL in the GIS discipline which influence the depth and breadth of the SCONUL model.

Unlike exploratory studies of IL which focus on the IL and IL competencies to explore this phenomenon, the methodological approach taken in this study provides IL researchers with a new approach whose primary focus is on the concept of information as a key contextual element of IL. This helps one to gain a deeper insight into IL in disciplinary areas.

The emergent aspects to the SCONUL model can be taken into consideration when designing and delivering IL programmes in the GIS discipline. Likewise, the emergent picture of IL in this study can be used by GIS educators to develop information‐literate GIS learners.

This study is original in terms of both its methodological approach and its outcomes. These can be of value to IL researchers, educators and practitioners.