Development of a fisheye-based information search processing aid for managing information overload in the web environment

Information technologies have proliferated at an unprecedented rate to provide access to information across geographical boundaries. However, this proliferation has led to an information overload. Information overload has adverse impacts on information use and decision quality. This research focuses on the overload problem resulting from a web search, and proposes a potential remedy. We develop the requirements of a system that makes use of clustering and visualization for browsing the results of a typical web search. Based on this model, we develop a prototype that visualizes search results by first organizing them into a hierarchy according to their individual contents. This system presents a visual overview of the groups in this hierarchy, and lets the users focus (zoom) on specific groups of interest. One general problem with zooming within hierarchical structures is the separation between the details and the context. To address this problem, we implement a fisheye zooming capability in our system. This paper describes a typology of the various components necessary for addressing the problem and then the proposed solution based upon a fisheye view-based visualization. Next, the specific visualization algorithm and the system implementation are described. We conclude with research questions for further development of such interfaces for presentation of the results from web searches.