There are numerous problems associated with formulating queries on networked information systems. These include increased data volume and complexity, accompanied by slow network access. This paper proposes a new approach to a network query user interfaces that consists of two phases: query preview and query refinement. This new approach is based on the concepts of dynamic queries and query previews, which guides users in rapidly and dynamically eliminating undesired records, reducing the data volume to a manageable size, and refining queries locally before submission over a network. Examples of two applications are given: a Restaurant Finder and a prototype for NASA's Earth Observing Systems--Data Information Systems (EOSDIS). Data architecture is discussed and user feedback is presented. Final version 2 Keywords: user interface, direct manipulation, dynamic query, information system, metadata, query preview, query refinement, science data, NASA EOSDIS. 1. INTRODUCTION The explorat...

This paper proposes a user interface for remote access of the National Library of Medicine's Visible Human digital image library. Users can visualize the library, browse contents, locate data of interest, and retrieve desired images. The interface presents a pair of tightly coupled views into the library data. The overview image provides a global view of the overall search space, and the preview image provides details about high resolution images available for retrieval. To explore, the user sweeps the views through the search space and receives smooth, rapid, visual feedback of contents. Desired images are automatically downloaded over the internet from the library. Library contents are indexed by meta-data consisting of automatically generated miniature visuals. The interface software is completely functional and freely available for public use, at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/. Keywords: Browsing, Digital Library, Image Database, Information Exploration, Information Retrieval, Internet,...

Users often must browse hierarchies with thousands of nodes in search of those that best match their information needs. The PDQ Tree-browser (Pruning with Dynamic Queries) visualization tool was specified, designed and developed for this purpose. This tool presents trees in two tightlycoupled views, one a detailed view and the other an overview. Users can use dynamic queries, a method for rapidly filtering data, to filter nodes at each level of the tree. The dynamic query panels are user-customizable. Subtrees of unselected nodes are pruned out, leading to compact views of relevant nodes. Usability testing of the PDQ Tree-browser, done with 8 subjects, helped assess strengths and identify possible improvements. The PDQ Tree-browser was used in Network Management (600 nodes) and UniversityFinder (1100 nodes) applications. A controlled experiment, with 24 subjects, showed that pruning significantly improved performance speed and subjective user satisfaction. Future research directions ar...

The accurate formulation of boolean expressions is a notorious problem in programming languages and database query tools. This paper studies the ways that untrained users naturally express and interpret queries, revealing some of the underlying reasons why this task is so difficult. Among the study's findings are: people interpret the word AND to mean either conjunction or disjunction depending on context, the scope to which they attribute the word NOT depends on whether the subsequent operator is AND or OR, and they often ignore parenthesis. Therefore, relying on these words and symbols for query formulation will result in poor usability. A tabular query form is proposed that avoids the need to name the operators, provides a clear distinction between conjunction and disjunction, and makes

In this paper we describe Kaleidoquery, a visual query language for object databases with the same expressive power as OQL. We will describe the design philosophy behind the filter flow nature of Kaleidoquery and present each of the language's constructs, giving examples and relating them to OQL. The Kaleidoquery language is described independent of any implementation details, but a brief description of a 3D interface currently under construction for Kaleidoquery is presented. The queries in this implementation of the language are translated into OQL and then passed to the object database O2 for evaluation.

We develop a new method to rank the degree of similarity between Boolean expressions, contrast it with other known methods, and describe its implementation. Our method reduces time and space complexity from exponential to polynomial in the number of Boolean terms. Index Terms - Boolean query, information retrieval, ranking, resource discovery, similarity measure. 1 Introduction Most library information systems let users make Boolean queries against their database. Internet resource discovery systems, such as WAIS [1] and our Indie [2], also support Boolean queries. Frequently, users find it convenient if the retrieval system returns the answers to their queries in a ranked order. This paper develops an efficient algorithm to rank the similarity between a user's Boolean query and a set of objects, each described by a Boolean expression. Our method produces similarity rankings between zero and one. If the query and the object with which it is compared contain some identical terms, the ...

In this paper, we present a new graphical interface for traditional library environments, which allows the user to elaborate easily and efficiently new strategies in search processes. This tool is based on two linked interactive Euler diagram representations. The first one is an interactive representation of the structures composing the documentary kernel of the library. The user may navigate and select items, making their own understanding of the database content, structure and access. The second one is a set based visualization of the results of a composed query. This allows the user to validate his search context and to elaborate strategies to go through the results. The association of both interfaces generates a tool that allows the user to elaborate the main search strategies through graphical manipulations.

This study proposes and evaluates a document analysis strategy for information retrieval with visualization interfaces. The goal of document analysis is to highlight structure that helps searchers make their own relevance judgments, rather than to shift judgments from humans onto machines. Searchers can investigate that structure with tools for visualizing multidimensional data. The structure of interest in this study is discrimination of documents into clusters. Two diagnostic measures may inform selection of document attributes for cluster discrimination: term discrimination value and the sum of pairwise term-vector correlations. A series of experiments tests the reliability of these measures for predicting clustering tendency, as measured by proportion of elongated triples and skewness of the distribution of document dissimilarities.

Keywords: POP-I.B barriers to programming, POP-II.A. novice programmers, POP-III.C all cognitive dimensions, POP-III.B new language. Research in Psychology of Programming (PoP) and related fields over the past thirty years has identified many important usability issues for programming languages and tools. However, when new programming languages are designed these findings do not seem to have much impact, so popular modern languages continue to exhibit many of the same old problems. This paper reviews the progress of an ongoing project to elevate the influence of PoP on the design of a new programming language. In the context of designing a new programming language for children, we cataloged and interpreted the prior work, performed new studies where questions remained unanswered, and have focused on usability throughout the design. In addition to producing a system that is easier to learn and use than existing systems, we hope to exemplify a process that could be adopted by other language designers to improve the usability of their systems.

This paper addresses how information visualization can support users in the meta search process and some of the design issues that arise. It describes MetaCrystal and its linked tools that enable users to control how to combine and filter the search results by different search engines. A hierarchy of aggregation is employed to provide users with quick insights into the number of documents found by a specific number or combination of search engines. MetaCrystal enables users to visually perform advanced filtering operations, such as complex Boolean constraints. This paper also discusses how to support tight coupling between the filtering controls and tools that operate at different levels of aggregation. 1.