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### Dissertation Information for Anselm Spoerri

NAME:
- Anselm Spoerri

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Computer Science

SCHOOL:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) (1995)

- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Inspected

Title: InfoCrystal: A visual tool for information retrieval

Abstract: "The InfoCrystal$\sp{\rm TM}$ is a novel representation that uses a simple visual metaphor to help users deal with some of the complexities inherent in information retrieval. As a visualization tool, it can display all the possible binary as well as continuous relationships among N concepts. As a visual query language, the InfoCrystal enables users to formulate both Boolean and vector space queries graphically. Hence, it provides a visual framework that unifies the complementary Boolean and Partial Matching approaches and allows users to take advantage of their respective strengths. The InfoCrystal acts like a Boolean Calculator and users can use it to employ the expressive power of the Boolean retrieval approach and its broadening/narrowing techniques in a visual way. Further, users can assign relevance weights to the concepts and formulate weighted queries by interacting with a threshold slider. The InfoCrystal offers the added advantage that users can control in a visual way how to translate weighted queries into Boolean queries. Finally, arbitrarily complex queries can be created by using the InfoCrystals as building blocks and organizing them in a hierarchical structure.

A user study tested a specific aspect of the InfoCrystal interface by comparing it with a standard Boolean retrieval interface. Although this study did not test all the valuable features of the InfoCrystal, it produced the following useful results: (1) It showed that novice users, who received only a short tutorial, could successfully use the novel InfoCrystal interface. (2) The study showed that the InfoCrystal, even at an early stage of development, performed as well as the familiar Boolean interface, although the study was biased in favor of the Boolean mode. (3) The user feedback concerning the InfoCrystal interface was very encouraging and it helped to pinpoint possible improvements.

The InfoCrystal has broad applications because it offers a ""visual machinery"" to compare and relate any number of ordinary or fuzzy sets of arbitrary data items. It opens up new possibilities for complex data explorations. The InfoCrystal enables users to integrate and explore information retrieved by different methods or from different sources in a flexible, dynamic and interactive way. "

### MPACT Scores for Anselm Spoerri

A = 0
C = 1
A+C = 1
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:11:30