1. DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
PhDAY 2011
Exploratory computing
designing engines for discovery-driven user
experiences
Luigi Spagnolo: spagnolo@elet.polimi.it

2. Exploration vs. search
DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
• E.g. a website presenting a research lab
• Search task:
§ "find recent significant publications on a certain
argument and/or by certain authors"
• Exploratory user experience:
§ understand the research interests of the lab (and
of its members) and how they evolved over time.
§ Evaluate the quality of research in terms of
publications and of collaboration with other
universities.

3. Exploration: a definition
DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
• Moving into a information space
representing a certain domain
§ The purpose: discovering additional information
the properties (the facets) of the objects in it
§ A sort of user-centred, interactive data mining
§ The query is not aimed at finding a set of objects,
but rather…
§ At defining the target set of objects whose
properties are observed and analysed
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4. My proposal: FELIS
DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
• Faceted Exploration for Leverage of
Information Systems
• A comprehensive framework for exploratory
user experiences, covering:
§ knowledge representation and querying
§ widgets and interaction patterns for
semantic faceted explorations
§ information visualization strategies to
highlight the correlation between
properties, supported by exploration
metrics
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5. FelisQL
DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
• A language for knowledge representation and
querying
§ An extension to LISQL (Ferré 2011, University of Rennes I)
§ Can be seen either as a different notation for RDF/SPARQL
or as an autonomous, high level query language
• User and application centred perspective:
§ High expressive power
§ Queries easily represented in the interface
§ Uniform way of describing resources coming from different
sources (e.g. mash-ups) and of different kind (controlled
vocabularies, ontologies, folksonomies, text mining data)
§ Simplified exchange of structured data between client and
server in rich internet applications
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6. FelisQL: a query
DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
a publication
and author:
(an associate professor and affiliation: ‘Politecnico di Milano’)
at position: “first” or “second”,
(a researcher and affiliation: (an university and country: not ‘Italy’))
Publications having as first or second author an
associate professor from Politecnico di Milano, and as
as additional author a researcher that is affilated to an
university that is not in Italy

7. The interface | 1
DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
• Facet widgets allow to navigate and analyse items
according to a specific property (e.g. author)
• Hyperlinks allow for query trasformations
§ Add new constraints (existential restrictions) on specific
properties and (the facets)
§ Add alternatives on the existing filters
• Focus: any sub-expression of the query
§ The point at which a new filter is “appended” à allows to
build full-Boolean queries of arbitrary depth
§ A different point of view on the target of the exploration
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8. The interface | 2
DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
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9. The interface | 3
DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
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10. Information visualization | 1
DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
• Tag clouds and histograms to represent
the relevance of facet values
• Possible measures of relevance
§ E.g. given the query a Publication and author: (an ‘Associate
Professor’ and the restriction subject: “exploratory interfaces”
§ Count: how may publications that are authored by an associate
professor have also “exploratory interfaces” as subject?
§ Recall: how many of those that have “exploratory interfaces” as
subject are also authored by an associate professor?
§ Other “custom measures”: e.g. average impact factor of
publications having “exploratory interfaces” as subject
• Multi-dimensional views for query results: charts,
maps, etc.
• Metrics for measuring “changes in explorations”
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11. Information visualization | 2
DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
An interactive map of venues
of archaeologic interest in Italy
with location: “Northern Italy”
selected
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12. Information visualization | 3
DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
Shift to
location: “Southern Italy”
the colors indicate the
increase/decrease of
relevance of ancient
civilizations in this area
w.r.t. to North
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13. DIPARTIMENTO DI ELETTRONICA E INFORMAZIONE
Thank you for your kind
attention!
For questions and details, write me at spagnolo@elet.polimi.it
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