A demonstrator for parallel faceted browsing

The data exploration paradigm of faceted browsing has been applied successfully in many systems that provide access to either semantic data or more conventional databases. A general limitation is that the user can examine the results for only one query (i.e., one combination of facet value constraints) at a time.But there are many everyday tasks for which it is desirable to be able to comparethe results for two or more queries or to refine several queries incrementally inparallel. In this paper, we introduce parallel faceted browsing which enables theuser to construct a tree of queries and associated results whose structure capturesthe commonalities among the queries. The entities represented in this demonstratorare events associated with Helsinki's role as the 2012 World Design Capital,as well as related events from other data sources that took place in Finland duringthe same period. Semantic Web technologies are used in the back-end forrepresenting and reconciling those heterogeneous data sources. Several types oftask have been identified in which parallel faceted browsing offers added value.Careful attention has been paid to interaction design with the goal of makingthis inherently more complex paradigm as intuitively understandable as normalfaceted browsing. Readers are encouraged to try the EVENTMAP demonstratoritself at http://eventmap-ui.appspot.com/.The data exploration paradigm of faceted browsing has been appliedsuccessfully in many systems that provide access to either semantic data or moreconventional databases. A general limitation is that the user can examine the resultsfor only one query (i.e., one combination of facet value constraints) at a time.But there are many everyday tasks for which it is desirable to be able to comparethe results for two or more queries or to refine several queries incrementally inparallel. In this paper, we introduce parallel faceted browsing which enables theuser to construct a tree of queries and associated results whose structure capturesthe commonalities among the queries. The entities represented in this demonstratorare events associated with Helsinki's role as the 2012 World Design Capital,as well as related events from other data sources that took place in Finland duringthe same period. Semantic Web technologies are used in the back-end forrepresenting and reconciling those heterogeneous data sources. Several types oftask have been identified in which parallel faceted browsing offers added value.Careful attention has been paid to interaction design with the goal of makingthis inherently more complex paradigm as intuitively understandable as normalfaceted browsing. Readers are encouraged to try the EVENTMAP demonstratoritself at http://eventmap-ui.appspot.com/.The data exploration paradigm of faceted browsing has been appliedsuccessfully in many systems that provide access to either semantic data or moreconventional databases. A general limitation is that the user can examine the resultsfor only one query (i.e., one combination of facet value constraints) at a time.But there are many everyday tasks for which it is desirable to be able to comparethe results for two or more queries or to refine several queries incrementally inparallel. In this paper, we introduce parallel faceted browsing which enables theuser to construct a tree of queries and associated results whose structure capturesthe commonalities among the queries. The entities represented in this demonstratorare events associated with Helsinki's role as the 2012 World Design Capital,as well as related events from other data sources that took place in Finland duringthe same period. Semantic Web technologies are used in the back-end forrepresenting and reconciling those heterogeneous data sources. Several types oftask have been identified in which parallel faceted browsing offers added value.Careful attention has been paid to interaction design with the goal of makingthis inherently more complex paradigm as intuitively understandable as normalfaceted browsing. Readers are encouraged to try the EVENTMAP demonstratoritself at http://eventmap-ui.appspot.com/.The data exploration paradigm of faceted browsing has been appliedsuccessfully in many systems that provide access to either semantic data or moreconventional databases. A general limitation is that the user can examine the resultsfor only one query (i.e., one combination of facet value constraints) at a time.But there are many everyday tasks for which it is desirable to be able to comparethe results for two or more queries or to refine several queries incrementally inparallel. In this paper, we introduce parallel faceted browsing which enables theuser to construct a tree of queries and associated results whose structure capturesthe commonalities among the queries. The entities represented in this demonstratorare events associated with Helsinki's role as the 2012 World Design Capital,as well as related events from other data sources that took place in Finland duringthe same period. Semantic Web technologies are used in the back-end forrepresenting and reconciling those heterogeneous data sources. Several types oftask have been identified in which parallel faceted browsing offers added value.Careful attention has been paid to interaction design with the goal of makingthis inherently more complex paradigm as intuitively understandable as normalfaceted browsing. Readers are encouraged to try the EVENTMAP demonstratoritself at http://eventmap-ui.appspot.com/.The data exploration paradigm of faceted browsing has been appliedsuccessfully in many systems that provide access to either semantic data or moreconventional databases. A general limitation is that the user can examine the resultsfor only one query (i.e., one combination of facet value constraints) at a time.But there are many everyday tasks for which it is desirable to be able to comparethe results for two or more queries or to refine several queries incrementally inparallel. In this paper, we introduce parallel faceted browsing which enables theuser to construct a tree of queries and associated results whose structure capturesthe commonalities among the queries. The entities represented in this demonstratorare events associated with Helsinki's role as the 2012 World Design Capital,as well as related events from other data sources that took place in Finland duringthe same period. Semantic Web technologies are used in the back-end forrepresenting and reconciling those heterogeneous data sources. Several types oftask have been identified in which parallel faceted browsing offers added value.Careful attention has been paid to interaction design with the goal of making