A Semantic Visual Text Abstract 06-2011
Todays dependance on technology is a process that started back in the 19th century. This technology push is still present, but is shifting towards an information push. Almost all current economic, social and technological trends can be clustered within the information revolution. Information is crucial. In todays society, more knowledge means more wealth.
This all started with the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1989. The introduction of mobile internet and social media gave society’s interconnectedness another boost. People are more connected than ever before, a phenomenon also dubbed as the network society.
The ways people communicate with media, has changed due to these developments. Because of the mobile web, people can consult any information, everywhere they want, any time they want.
A semantic visual text abstract builds upon this visionary background. Readers want a personal, filtered text abstract that gives an objective insight in a book, instead of the current subjective blurb on a book backs. The abstract’s aim is to analyze a book on a semantic level, showing more than just an analytic visualization of text. What a semantic visual text abstract will do, is interpret text and return a filtered user-specific view on a book.
The final design of the semantic visual text abstract, uses these three blocks (book contents, reviews recommendation) to create a visual abstract of a book. The final visualization consists out of two layers, the visual layer and the underlying (textual) content layer. The first layer’s purpose is to make quick comparison possible whereas the second layers provides the much desired objective in-depth information.
In the end, a semantic visual text abstract provides readers with an objective visual tool that offers a look in a book’s content and context, helps them compare books mutually and last but not least makes the decision process a little bit easier.
To test this prototype an iPad app was created from the initial Processing/Java application. The blog that ran alongside this project is still online (escee.org/rant/). If you are interested in this project or want more information, do not hesitated to contact me. I’m quite enthusiastic about this topic!
This graduation project was carried out at LUSTlab (lustlab.net).