An Embeddable Dashboard for Widget-Based Visual Analytics on Scientific Communities

Lehrstuhl Informatik 5

(Information Systems)

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke

1 These presentation slides by Michael Derntl are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

An Embeddable Dashboard for

Widget-Based Visual Analytics on

Scientific Communities

Michael Derntl, Stephan Erdtmann, Ralf Klamma

RWTH Aachen UniversityAdvanced Community Information Systems (ACIS)

Informatik 5, Aachen, Germany

[email protected]

12th International Conference on Knowledge Management

and Knowledge Technologies (i-KNOW 2012)

5-7 September 2012

Graz, Austria



Prof. Dr. M. Jarke

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Motivation

� Scientific results socially created in scientific

communities1

� Quality of products �� success of community

� Stakeholder interest in success factors

� Classic indices: publications, citations –

established communities

� New publication channels, new collaboration means

– Web 2.0, social media/networks, etc.

– Scattered information and large data volumes

1W. A. Kornfeld and C. Hewitt. The Scientic Community Metaphor. IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, and Cybern., SMC-11(1):24-33, 1981.



Prof. Dr. M. Jarke

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Data Visualization

� Data visualization

eases assimilation

of information

� Modern web

technologies

enable interactive

visualizations

� Popular metaphor: dashboards

– One page overview, aggregate data, focus on important

data, interactive components

© Google, Inc.



Prof. Dr. M. Jarke

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Dashboards and Visual Analytics

� Requirements for visual analytics1

– Interactive display supporting exploration and reasoning

– Stakeholder oriented flexible view – personalization, …

� Dashboard: viable tool for visual analyticson scientific community datasets?

1J. J. Thomas and K. A. Cook, eds. Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics. IEEE, 2005.

http://cdn.speedhunters.com/wp-

content/uploads/2010/01/gasser7.jpg



Prof. Dr. M. Jarke

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Pilot Community: TEL

TEL-Map: roadmapping and weak signal analysis in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL); supported by the TEL Mediabase1

1M. Derntl, R. Klamma. A Mediabase for Technology Enhanced Learning in Europe. IEEE Learn. Tech. Newsletter, 14(3):2-5, 2012.



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Challenges

� Configuring personalized dashboards

– Addressing different stakeholder groups

– Easy to set up / configure / use for non-technical people

– Reusability of the solution beyond the pilot case

� Interactive visualization of arbitrary database query

results

– Different types of charts / graphs

– New visualizations should easily be createable

– Compatible with existing and new databases



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Objectives

� Web-based dashboard for visualising SQL query

results

� Decoupling the hosting application from dashboard

application

� Implementation of

– Dashboard frame containing visualization widgets

– Data visualization generator app

� For pilot case at learningfrontiers.eu:

– Dashboard frame as a Drupal module

– Reuse of user credendials



Prof. Dr. M. Jarke

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Use Cases & GUI

Embedding Application

Control

Pane

Widget Container

Viz 1

Viz n

Viz 2



Prof. Dr. M. Jarke

9http://learningfrontiers.eu/?q=dashboard



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Widget Creator

� Selecting a database

connection

� Entering an SQL query

� Selecting a

visualization type

� Instant preview using

Google Visualization

API

� Publish as OpenSocial

widget



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Technical Architecture

Data Sources for

Visualization

Dashboard

Control Pane Widget Container

LAS Ajax Client

Visualization Widgets

Lightweight Application Server (LAS)1

LAS HTTP Connector

LAS Services

LAS Database Connector

User & Widget

Data

Data Sources for

Visualization

Visualization

Layer

Application

Layer

Data

Layer

1M. Spaniol et al. LAS: A Lightweight Application Server…In Proc. i-KNOW 2006, pp. 592-599, 2006.

Previously

existing

Newly

implemented

Legend



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Components Interaction

Application DataDashboard Container

Dashboard

Visualization

Widget

Lightweight Application

Server (LAS)

User Data

Widget Data

Data Sources

Database(s)

User Management

Service

Dashboard

Service

Query

Service

1a

1b3

6b

4a6a

4b

5c5b

2

5a

Visualization Layer Application Layer Data Layer

123

4

5

6

Register user (on first visit; automatically done by the embedding application)Hand over LAS user credentials to the dashboard containerDashboard container log in user on LAS

Retrieve list of available visualization widgets

Display visualization in widget

Store user preferences (after all personalization actions; during evaluation: action log)

Component of the

embedding application

Component of the

dashboard framework

Legend



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End-User Evaluation

� Goal

– Evaluation of usability and usefulness

– Obtain feedback for improvement

� Methodology

– Creation of ~20 visualization widgets on 3 TEL-Map databases

– Definition of default dashboard for first login

– TEL-Map partners / researchers tested according to

predefined tasks (=> use cases)

– Rating of the test participants has been determined using

surveys (18 five-point Likert scale items + 2 open questions)

– Collection of usage data (user action log)



Prof. Dr. M. Jarke

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Evaluation: Participants

� Survey was completed by 20 participants from TEL

context

� On average they

– dedicate 2/3 of their current working time to TEL.

– have 8.5 years of experience with TEL



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Evaluation: Usability Results

� Higher scores for usability compared to usefulness

� Negative correlation (p<.01) between years of experienceand usability/usefulness

4.90

4.40

4.15

4.55

4.15

3.85

3.85

3.50

4.55

1 2 3 4 5

It is easy to remove widgets

It is easy to rearrange widgets

It is easy to resize the widget height and width

It is easy to detach widgets

It is easy to find the description of a widget

The widget descriptions are sufficient to understand thewidget content

The search interface is easy to use

It was easy to find relevant widgets

It was easy to add available widgets

Usa

bilit

y

N = 20 (M = 4.21 ± .68)



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Evaluation: Usefulness Results

� Higher scores for usability compared to usefulness

� Negative correlation (p<.01) between years of experienceand usability/usefulness

3.80

4.05

3.90

3.45

3.65

3.40

3.05

4.11

4.00

1 2 3 4 5

The data covered by available widgets appears relevantto me

The data covered by the widgets appears relevant to theTEL community

The available widgets cover a broad range of TEL

The available categories are useful to search forwidgets

The style of the data visualizations is appropriate

The range of available data visualizations is sufficient

This dashboard has all the functions and capabilities Iexpect it to have

The dashboard is useful to support mapping androadmapping activities in TEL

The dashboard can support different TEL stakeholdersin observing data

Use

fuln

ess

(M = 3.72 ± .84)N = 20



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Evaluation: Qualitative Results

� Experiences with creating a new widget (exploring thedata, offering visualizations)

– 14 tried, 7 succeeded (3 w/ error message on embed)

– Problems: Incomplete documentation, DB schemas unknown

� Suggestions for improvement

– Missing access to data behind a visualization

– Useful for statistics about TEL, but less useful for understanding the future

– Problems with meaning of visualizations and categories

– Complex visualizations hard to read

– Data export functionalities needed

– Unintuitive interaction with the dashboard



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Evaluation: Action Log

687 actions by 25 users traced over 13 days (~27 per user)

4.00

4.00

3.00

2.75

2.33

2.25

2.14

2.00

2.00

2.00

0 1 2 3 4

Search (1)

Social (1)

Radar* (3)

Network (4)

Content (3)

Histogram* (4)

Papers (7)

Blogs (6)

Geographical (6)

Pie* (4)

Top 10: # Embeds / Widget / Category

196

141

101

88

50

30

26

28

17

10

0 50 100 150 200 250 300

Toggle control pane

Embed widget

Remove widget

Move widget

Search by category

Search by keyword

Resize column

Resize widget

Create widget

Add/Rem column

Action Ranking

During evaluation

After evaluation



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Conclusions and Further Work

� Key points

– Dashboard embeddable anywhere with few HTML lines

– Visualization of scientific community data– OpenSocial based widgets

– Google Visualization API based on SQL query results

– Arbitrary relational DB sources possible

– Pilot case: Drupal-based TEL portal; generally positive evaluation

� Limitations

– Visualizations limited to single SQL query

– More interactive and explorative features needed for visualanalytics tasks

An Embeddable Dashboard for Widget-Based Visual Analytics on Scientific Communities

Technology

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