• 2006
• Domain Map
• Exhibit map
• Project link
• Previous
• Next

Dr. Katy Börner, Elisha Hardy, Bruce W. Herr II, and Todd Holloway of the Information Visualization Lab at Indiana University designed and implemented the Taxonomy Visualization (TV) tool in collaboration with W. Bradford Paley. The tool supports the semi-automatic validation and optimization of organization schemas such as file directories, classification hierarchies, taxonomies, or any other structure imposed on a data set as a means of organizing, structuring, and naming. By showing the “goodness of fit” of a schema and the potentially millions of items it organizes, the TV eases the identification and reclassification of misclassified information entities, the identification of classes that grew over-proportionally, the evaluation of the size and homogeneity of existing classes, the examination of the “well-formedness” of an organization schema, etc.

Description of Unique Features: The TV shows the organization schema as a hierarchy in which sublevels are indented according to their depth in the hierarchy. Item properties are represented by bar graphs on the left-hand side of the schema. Item and class interrelations are denoted by line overlays. The map displays the United States Patent and Trademark Office patent classification, which organizes 3 million patents into about 160,000 distinct patent classes. Exemplarily shown are two patents, together with, respectively, their prior art and impact.