Visual Search and Information Visualization vis-a-vis Information Retrieval

Broadly speaking, information visualization is a graphical presentation for manipulating information extracted from a larger document corpus or an information database. This ability to represent information in a graphical user interface enables users to understand and grasp the information faster, recognize and discover meaningful trends, patterns, important information clusters, providing him/her with more actionable information, adding to his/her decision making capacity. So information visualization in a way, shifts the focus of information retrieval to information processing from the lexical to the spatial and visual sphere.

Visual search then - used either for web information retrieval, or for non-internet information retrieval, is the ability to browse search results by using 2D or 3D color graphics and animation. These search results can reveal the structure of information giving it a spatial dimension - allowing users to navigate and interact with it in a completely different way than text based results.

It is important to note here that we are not talking about image or multimedia retrieval/search, we are talking about retrieving textual information by using visual means.

Visual Search on the Internet: How Do We evaluate?

Against the backdrop of the definition of visual search, let us lay down a few evaluation criteria to judge visual search on the Internet:

Information Grouping	The basis for relationship grouping of information results represented by images
Spacial and Graphical Organization of Information	Graphing/layering these visually represented information clusters to maximize the attention span of the user
User Cues	Guiding users to maximize the navigation capabilities of the visual presentation of information (text labels, notes, etc.)
Visualization Type	The type of visualization used
Navigation	Being able to navigate from visual search to text base search
Image and Information Clutter	The ability to avoid information and image/graphical clutter.
Actionable Intelligence	Ability to derive actionable information intelligence through information visualization

Here are a few examples of visual search - on the Internet and through downloadable commercial tools like Grokker:

• Grokker
• KarToo


• Anacubis


• Web Brain

Grokker, Anacubis, Kartoo and WebBrain: A Comparative Chart
Evaluation Criterion	Grokker	Anacubis	KarToo	WebBrain
Information Grouping	Theme based grouping of Google Results	Keyword based grouping of Google Results	Uses an amalgamation of keyword based and syntax based techniques to group search results	Text Images based on Open Directory projects. Uses the Open Directory relationships to show the visual text map.
Spacial and Graphical Organization of Information	Uses theme-based concentric circles to organize results	Very difficult to see images and the text - not a very intuitive way to visualize information - at least in the Google demo.	Interesting animations, and also interesting attempt at relationship mapping, but too jazzy to aid the human attention span	Very clear structure but not much of graphing.
User Cues	Provides user cues in term of color high-lighting and mouse over text tags	Title of the web page and the URL	Top keywords are shown in the right hand corner on the mouse-over	No cues, the images are themselves text-based
Visualization Type	Concentric Relationship Graphs	Relationship Graph	Flash Animation relationship graph	Relationship Graph
Navigation	Results are summarized through mouse-over, web-pages shown on click.	Users click to go the web-page	Summaries of results shown, actual web-page one click away	Result Summaries shown upon mouse over, Results are shown in a different frame.
Actionable Intelligence	Information organized in theme-based concentric circles attempts to provide information map at-a-glance	Almost none in the Web-based demo	Almost none	Almost none
Image and Information Clutter	Despite the concentric circle arrangement there is still considerable amount of information clutter	Relatively clean results	Considerable amount of information clutter	Relatively clean results

Information Visualization: Other Players

Apart from the demos that we have seen above, there are other players who provide visual search and more advanced information management and retrieval solutions to businesses. Notable amongst them Antarctica Systems and Inxight . Antarctica Systems had a number of demos on line but most of them have been pulled back, most probably for competitive intelligence reasons. Still a few remain online Map Net and Canada-VC Deal Map are good examples representing Antarctica technology.

Inxight on the other hand, is one the most respected names in unstructured information management field and its StarTree supported by the VizServer platform is one of the most innovative solutions in this arena. It is important to note that StarTree (click here to see a few demos of StarTree) comes from the Hyperbolic Browser developed by Xerox Parc Research.

In terms of the evaluation criteria, both the solutions are way ahead of the visual search examples mentioned earlier- Antarctica Systems' Visual Net and Inxight's Star Tree solutions provide a technologically advanced platform that can help users in identifying, discovering and providing a visually conducive environment to act upon the actionable information intelligence derived from visual information clustering.

Grooker and Other Players

In terms of search visualization and in the general context of information visualization, Grokker is - despite its limitations - a very bold attempt at bundling information visualization into a desktop tool. The biggest advantage of Grokker is that it tries to take information and search visualization to masses and familiarizes them to a number of utilities to organize and visualize web-based information.