The investigators' research in multiple reference point models of information petrieval (IR) has led to the development of a collection of visual information retrieval interfaces (VIRIs) embodying different approaches to visualizing similarity and semantic relations among documents. These VIRIs are intended to aid users in retrieval and organization of online information. VIRIs based on visualization of Boolean/set operations (BIRD), distance measures in a reduced space defined by reference points (GUIDO), similarity with respect to multiple reference points (VIBE), and similarity defined jointly by distance and angular separation (DARE) have been developed. User studies will be conducted with these VIRIs in order to: 1) improve usability of their interfaces, 2) investigate conceptual accessibility of different visualizations to potential user populations, and 3) evaluate utility of the VIRIs for prototypical information retrieval and organization tasks. These studies will provide the first systematic investigation of the usefulness of document space visualizations to expected user populations for a variety of information retrieval and organization tasks. The interface features enhancing VIRI usability, and information visualizations demonstrating usefulness are expected to augment hypertext as mechanisms for organizing and accessing online information.
