Interactive Visualization of blog searches Master of Science Thesis in Computer Science and Engineerinng Daniel Svensson Department of Computer Science and Engineering CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Göteborg, Sweden, May 2009 The Author grants to Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg the non- exclusive right to publish the Work electronically and in a non-commercial purpose make it accessible on the Internet. The Author warrants that he/she is the author to the Work, and warrants that the Work does not contain text, pictures or other material that violates copyright law. The Author shall, when transferring the rights of the Work to a third party (for example a publisher or a company), acknowledge the third party about this agreement. If the Author has signed a copyright agreement with a third party regarding the Work, the Author warrants hereby that he/she has obtained any necessary permission from this third party to let Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg store the Work electronically and make it accessible on the Internet. Interactive Visualization of Blog Search Daniel Svensson. © Daniel Svensson, May 2009. Examiner: Staffan Björk Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers University of Technology SE‐412 96 Göteborg Sweden Telephone + 46 (0)31‐772 1000 Cover: An image of the first draft of concept 2 [see Chapter 5.2.3]. Department of Computer Science and Engineering Göteborg, Sweden May 2009 Abstract This report describes the project Interactive Visualization of Blog Searches from research and concept creation to the final implementation results. The purpose of this project was to develop a visual interface for browsing search results from the Twingly blog search engine which intends to simplify the users screening process and encourage browsing. The methods used to develop and implement the search interface and the two final results, the concept and the implementation, are presented in this report. The concept is an ideal description of the proposed functionality and components of the blog search interface developed during the initial phase of this project. Three different concepts were developed and one was chosen for further development, all three concepts are presented. The final concept which was chosen for implementation is an augmented version of an existing interface originally used for presenting album covers in Apple’s application iTunes. The implementation is the realization of the concept and was implemented as a Flash application using the programming language ActionScript 3 and the 3D engine Papervision. The final application implements most of the functionality and graphical content described in the concept but unfortunately suffers from a low frame rate. The main reasons for this low frame rate and proposed improvements to the implementation are discussed at the end of the report. Department of Computer Science and Engineering CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Göteborg, Sweden, May 2009 Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 3 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 6 1.1 Stakeholders .................................................................................................................................. 6 1.2 Purpose .......................................................................................................................................... 6 1.3 Constraints & Scope ...................................................................................................................... 6 2 Background ........................................................................................................................................... 7 2.1 Data Visualization .......................................................................................................................... 7 2.2 Twingly Search Engine ................................................................................................................... 8 3 Research & Theory ............................................................................................................................... 9 3.1 Related work ................................................................................................................................. 9 3.2 Interaction & GUI design ............................................................................................................. 10 3.2.1 Goal Directed Design ............................................................................................................ 11 3.2.2 Conceptualization & Prototyping ......................................................................................... 12 4 Project Plan ......................................................................................................................................... 13 4.1 Design Phase ................................................................................................................................ 13 4.2 Implementation Phase ................................................................................................................ 13 5 Development ...................................................................................................................................... 14 5.1 Research ...................................................................................................................................... 14 5.1.1 Technical research ................................................................................................................ 14 5.1.2 Market research ................................................................................................................... 15 5.2 Design .......................................................................................................................................... 16 5.2.1 Concept one ......................................................................................................................... 17 5.2.2 Meeting with Twingly ........................................................................................................... 19 5.2.3 Concept two ......................................................................................................................... 21 5.2.3 Concept three ....................................................................................................................... 23 5.2.4 Choosing a concept .............................................................................................................. 24 5.2.5 Tweaking the concept .......................................................................................................... 25 5.3 Implementation ........................................................................................................................... 27 5.3.1 Plan and priority list ............................................................................................................. 27 5.3.2 Iteration one ......................................................................................................................... 28 5.3.3 Iteration two ......................................................................................................................... 30 5.3.4 Iteration three ...................................................................................................................... 33 5.3.5 Quality assurance ................................................................................................................. 38 6 Results ................................................................................................................................................ 39 6.1 Final design concept .................................................................................................................... 39 6.1.1 Components and interaction ................................................................................................ 39 6.1.3 Graphical profile ................................................................................................................... 40 6.2 Final implementation .................................................................................................................. 40 6.2.1 Version 0.9 ............................................................................................................................ 40 6.2.2 System architecture ............................................................................................................. 42 7 Discussion ........................................................................................................................................... 45 7.1 Design phase ............................................................................................................................... 45 7.2 Implementation phase ................................................................................................................ 47 8 Extensions & improvements .............................................................................................................. 49 8.1 Improving the concept ...............................................................................................................