Developing Visualization Techniques for Semantics-based Information Networks

Information systems incorporating complex networkstructured information spaces with a semantic underpinning – such as hypermedia networks, semantic networks, topic maps, and concept maps – are being deployed to solve some of NASA’s critical information management problems. This paper describes some of the human interaction and navigation problems associated with complex semantic information spaces and describes a set of new visual interface approaches to address these problems. A key strategy is to leverage semantic knowledge represented within these information spaces to construct abstractions and views that will be meaningful to the human user. Human-computer interaction methodologies will guide the development and evaluation of these approaches, which will benefit deployed NASA systems and also apply to information systems based on the emerging Semantic Web.