Visualizing the non-visual: spatial analysis and interaction with information from text documents

TLDR

The application arena is large text document corpora such as digital libraries, regulations and procedures, archived reports, etc. The paper proposes an approach to information visualization that spatializes text content to enable enhanced visual browsing and analysis. The method transforms text from large corpora into a spatial representation that preserves informational characteristics, allowing visual browsing and analysis that bypasses language processing and reduces analyst mental workload. The resulting interaction with text more closely resembles natural perception and action than abstract written language.

Abstract

The paper describes an approach to IV that involves spatializing text content for enhanced visual browsing and analysis. The application arena is large text document corpora such as digital libraries, regulations and procedures, archived reports, etc. The basic idea is that text content from these sources may be transformed to a spatial representation that preserves informational characteristics from the documents. The spatial representation may then be visually browsed and analyzed in ways that avoid language processing and that reduce the analysts mental workload. The result is an interaction with text that more nearly resembles perception and action with the natural world than with the abstractions of written language.