Interactive Exploration System: A User-Centered Interaction Approach in Semantics Visualizations

Nowadays a wide range of input devices are available to users of technical systems. Especially modern alternative interaction devices, which are known from game consoles etc., provide a more natural way of interaction. In parallel to that the research on visualization of large amount of data advances very quickly. This research was also influenced by the semantic web and the idea of storing data in a structured and linked form. The semantically annotated data gains more and more importance in information acquisition processes. Especially the Linked Open Data (LOD) format already experienced a huge growth. However, the user-interfaces of web-applications mostly do not reflect the added value of semantics data. This paper describes the conceptual design and implementation of an Interactive Exploration System that offers a user-centered graphical environment of web-based knowledge repositories, to support and optimize explorative learning, and the integration of a taxonomy-based approach to enable the use of more natural interaction metaphors, as they are possible with modern devices like WiiMote or Microsoft Kinect. Therefore we introduce a different classification for interaction devices, and current approaches for supporting the added values in semantics visualizations. Furthermore, we describe the concept of our IES, including a strategy to organize and structure today's existing input devices, and a semantics exploration system driven by user-experience. We conclude the paper with a description of the implementation of the IES and an application scenario.