System and method for visualizing and navigating content in a graphical user interface

• US 20030122873A1
• Filed: 12/28/2001
• Published: 07/03/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: LinkedIn Corporation (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Dieberger, Andreas, Ponceleon, Dulce Beatriz, Russell, Daniel Martin
• Granted Patent: US 7,143,362 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/764
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/338 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0485 Scrolling or panning

Abstract

A system and method for visualizing and navigating document content using a condensed representation of a document to provide both a global overview of the distribution of key search terms as well as their immediate context. The invention supports rapid skimming of documents and document collections and enables efficient information finding, in some cases entirely eliminating the need to scroll within a document as with a conventional browser tool. The invention is of particular utility with personal digital assistants, which generally have small displays and limited storage capacity and communication bandwidth in comparison to personal computers. Documents may include conventional text and image files, web pages, audio files, and video files. The invention may also apply to collections of documents.

Claims

1. A method for visualizing and navigating documents in a graphical user interface comprising the steps of:

generating a summary view of at least one document containing instances of search terms using a condensed abstract representation depicting a search term density distribution;

triggering an enhancement of said summary view by cursor brushing; and

navigating to at least one segment of said document by selecting a corresponding portion of said summary view.

2. The method of claim 1 comprising the further step of identifying said documents with at least one search engine.

3. The method of claim 1 comprising the further step of generating document metadata using at least one indexing tool.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein said metadata includes at least one of:

search terms, textual transcript, results of a textual transcript search, results of a speaker change search, results of a stress analysis, topic headings, results of a topic change search, results of a speech transcript search, audio features, audio amplitude data, number of accesses to a particular document segment.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein said generating step uses said document metadata to depict said search term density distribution.

6. The method of claim 3 wherein the physical dimensions of said summary view encode metadata values.

7. A system for visualizing and navigating documents in a graphical user interface comprising:

a summary view of at least one document containing instances of search terms including a condensed abstract representation depicting a search term density distribution;

an enhancement of said summary view triggered by cursor brushing; and

at least one segment of said document navigated to by selecting a corresponding portion of said summary view.

8. The system of claim 7 wherein said graphical user interface is generated by at least one of:

a digital computer, a personal digital assistant, a personal information manager, a cell phone microbrowser.

9. The system of claim 7 wherein said document comprises at least one of:

a text file, an image file, a web page, an audio file, a video file.

10. The system of claim 7 wherein said document includes a collection of documents.

11. The system of claim 7 wherein said representation includes an array of cells having rows and columns corresponding to said search terms and said document segments.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein contents of a particular cell represent the presence and absence of search terms, and a frequency with which said search terms occur in the document segment corresponding to said cell, as an indication of document relevance.

13. The system of claim 7 wherein said enhancement includes the first several words from a particular corresponding document segment.

14. The system of claim 7 wherein said summary view is displayed in a modified version of said document.

15. The system of claim 7 wherein said enhancement includes a contextual snippet having said search term and a number of surrounding words.

16. The system of claim 7 wherein said summary view is displayed in a fold-out window above said document.

17. The system of claim 7 wherein said enhancement includes a hierarchy of said representations, with each subsequent representation in said hierarchy depicting information at an increased resolution.

18. The system of claim 7 wherein said document is a video file and said enhancement includes a hierarchy of said representations and at least one video frame.

19. The system of claim 7 wherein said document is a collection of video files and said enhancement includes individual video files from said collection.

20. The system of claim 7 wherein said document is collection of video files and said enhancement includes a hierarchy of said summary views, with a first layer in the hierarchy including information describing individual video files from said collection, and with a second layer in the hierarchy including at least one video frame from said individual video files.

21. The system of claim 7 wherein said document is a video file and said enhancement includes a storyboard having a number of video frames.

22. A system for visualizing and navigating documents in a graphical user interface comprising:

means for generating a summary view of at least one document containing instances of search terms using a condensed abstract representation depicting a search term density distribution;

means for triggering an enhancement of said summary view by cursor brushing; and

means for navigating to at least one segment of said document by selecting a corresponding portion of said summary view.

23. A computer program product comprising a machine-readable medium having computer-executable program instructions thereon including:

a first code means for generating a summary view of at least one document containing instances of search terms using a condensed abstract representation depicting a search term density distribution;

a second code means for triggering an enhancement of said summary view by cursor brushing; and

a third code means for navigating to at least one segment of said document by selecting a corresponding portion of said summary view.