A Visual Query System for Scholar Networks
This work addresses usability issues for researchers and academics using scholar network tools, but it is incremental as it builds on existing visualization methods.
The authors tackled the problem of hidden relations in search results of scholar networks like Aminer by visualizing them in a user-friendly way, and their user study showed that the designed graphs helped users better understand areas and make searches more effective.
Large scholar networks is quite popular in the academic domain, like Aminer. It offers to display the academic social network, including profile search, expert finding, conference analysis, course search, sub-graph search, topic browser, academic ranks and user management. Usually the search results are listed as items, while the relations among them are hidden to the users. Visualization is a feasible way to help users explore the hidden relations and discover more useful information. This article aim to visualize the search results in Aminer in a more user-friendly way and help them better utilize the tool. We provided three different designs to visualize the results and tested them in user study. The empirical results of our research show that the designed graphs help users better understand the area they intend to know and make their search more effective.