TRIPLE Deliverable: D5.4 Report on the Visualisations

Every year, millions of papers, datasets, and other products of the research life cycle are published. List-based search interfaces alone are not sufficient any more for exploration and discovery of this huge amount of knowledge available. As a result, visualisations have become increasingly relevant in discovery. They can provide a much quicker overview of and insight into a set of research outputs than a pure list-based approach.

In this deliverable, we describe two sets of visualisations developed by Open Knowledge Maps that are integrated in GoTriple as part of the innovative services. The first set are complex, interactive visualisations, knowledge map and streamgraph. They are based on the longstanding open source framework Head Start, which is adapted and extended within TRIPLE for the needs and requirements of the Social Sciences and Humanities domain. While these two visualisations can be embedded within other interfaces, they are usually used on their own. The second set are less complex diagram components. They are not meant to be used as standalone interfaces. Instead, they are meant to enhance the information included on other pages within the GoTriple platform such as search results and landing pages.

The visualisations described in this deliverable are very well suited to help researchers overcome their information overload issues. This was supported by the user research in this project. In a workshop on innovative visualisations, the visualisations were received well in general. Especially the knowledge map and streamgraph seemed to have the most potential in giving additional insights and context to the research results. Overall, participants agreed that visual discovery tools can solve many challenges related to finding relevant information on the GoTriple platform.

The innovative visualisations will support the GoTriple users in a unique way. As one of the first discovery platforms, GoTriple brings both visualisation approaches together. The simpler, diagram-like components can be used as needed across the platform to provide additional insight into the data. The more complex, stand-alone visualisation interfaces can be offered to users who seek a topical or temporal overview or are interested in a more serendipitous search experience.

In this deliverable, we describe the visualisations and their integration into the GoTriple platform in detail, both from a design perspective and from a technical perspective. Furthermore, we describe the work done in the associated task T5.4. This work includes the development of the diagram components, which encompasses research, their design, specification, and implementation, as well as improvements to the Head Start visualisations, such as the development of new features, integration of new algorithms, and UX improvements.