User Interface

The webLyzard information exploration and retrieval interface (=”dashboard”) helps identify, track and analyze topics across stakeholders and sources. It builds upon a comprehensive content repository structured along geospatial, semantic and temporal dimensions. The dashboard is divided into six main content areas as shown in the following figure:

Overview of the webLyzard dashboard

1. Sources and Settings: Drop-down elements in the upper menu let users choose a time interval, the document source (news media, blogs, social media, etc.), and the global sentiment filter setting (unfiltered, positive, negative). In conjunction with full-text search capabilities and the resulting keyword graph, the global sentiment filter is an effective means to investigate stakeholders’ associations with a topic of interest.
2. Topics: The upper left window of the dashboard contains the topic management and content navigation. On mouse-over, users have the following options:
   (a) click on a term to trigger the full text search;
   (b) use topic markers (= small rectangles) to select the topics to be shown in the charts;
   (c) compute related terms to update the associations window (‘arrow down’ symbol);
   (d) add/modify topics and email alerts with the topic editor (‘settings’ symbol).
3. Trend Charts: Below the source selection, interactive interactive charts show the frequency of selected topics in the specified time interval (default: two months), as well as the observed sentiment and disagreement regarding these topics.
4. Content View: The content view below shows the active document including keywords, publication date, place of publication (source geography), and primary location that is being referenced (target geography).
5. Search Results: The lower third of the dashboard is reserved for displaying the list of terms associated with a selected topic, as well as a list of search results ranked by similar topic or nearby location (on either the document or sentence level).
6. Visualizations: To visualize complex and often hidden relations within the content repository, webLyzard integrates geographic maps, ontology graphs, tag clouds, and information landscapes to visualize document clusters. The maps are re-sized automatically and can be repositioned using drag-and-drop operations (see below for a detailed description of the synchronization mechanism).

Temporal Controls

Users can adjust the time interval and access historic data by selecting “from” and “to” dates using the two calendar elements. This is a global setting that not only affects the trend chart, as outlined in the next section, but also limits search queries and dynamic visualizations to the chosen time interval. Dates can be selected by navigating one day or week into the past or future by using the provided back and forward buttons, respectively, or by selecting a specific date using the drop-down calendar. Selecting a new “to” date automatically updates the trend charts, the active document, as well as the semantic map in case the new date belongs to a different weekly snapshot.

Real-Time Map Synchronization

The maps on the right side of the dashboard facilitate access to the underlying knowledge base. Clicking on the ‘maximize’ button increases the size of the maps; clicking on the ‘popup’ button opens the map in a separate browser window (which allows using the system in multiple-screen configurations). Maps can be rearranged by dragging them to the desired position, and switched on and off using the buttons in the top bar.

The various windows are tightly coupled – user actions in one window trigger an immediate update of all other displays. As an alternative to entering query terms (see previous section) to find specific documents, users can click on any position in the maps (not only on the markers) to retrieve articles related to that particular location, topic or domain concept.

Hovering above a map previews the document closest to the current position of the mouse pointer, but does not activate it. When previewing documents, the other visualizations on the right side automatically adjust to show the immediate context of the previewed documents. Users who want to focus on a particular region can disable this default setting and “freeze” the currently displayed part of the map by pressing the pause button.