VISUALLY REPRESENTING A HIERARCHY OF CATEGORY NODES

• US 20110113385A1
• Filed: 11/06/2009
• Published: 05/12/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/06/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus LLC (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Scholz, Martin, Zendejas, Ignacio, Sayers, Craig Peter, Rajaram, Shyamsundar, Lukose, Rajan
• Granted Patent: US 8,954,893 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/853
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/954 Navigation, e.g. using categorised browsing

Abstract

In a method of visually representing a hierarchy of category nodes that identify one or more concepts, accesses to documents are tracked and one or more concepts that are relevant to the accessed documents are determined. In addition, one or more category paths through the hierarchy of category nodes for the determined one or more concepts are determined and relevance levels for the category nodes with respect to the determined one or more concepts are determined based upon the generated one or more category paths. Moreover, a graph depicting a visual representation of the relevance levels determined for each of the category nodes in the hierarchy of category nodes is constructed.

Claims

1. A method of visually representing a hierarchy of category nodes that identify one or more concepts, said method comprising:

in a computing device, tracking accesses to documents;

determining one or more concepts that are relevant to the accessed documents;

determining one or more category paths through the hierarchy of category nodes for the determined one or more concepts, wherein each of the one or more category paths is weighted according to a relevance between the one or more category paths and respective ones of the one or more concepts;

determining relevance levels for the category nodes with respect to the determined one or more concepts based upon the determined one or more category paths; and

constructing a graph depicting a visual representation of the relevance levels determined for each of the category nodes in the hierarchy of category nodes.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the hierarchy of category nodes is based upon category and concept relationships defined in a labeled text data source.

3. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

setting each of the category nodes to an initial predetermined score; and

assigning scores to each of the category nodes based upon the weights assigned to the one or more category paths for the one or more concepts, wherein the scores correspond to the relevance levels of the category nodes to the one or more concepts.

4. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

generating a visual representation of the one or more concepts generated for the accessed documents, wherein the visual representation graphically depicts at least one distinguishing characteristic associated with the tracked accesses to the documents.

5. The method according to claim 4, wherein generating a visual representation of the one or more concepts further comprises generating a tag cloud containing the one or more concepts, wherein at least one of the one or more concepts has at least one characteristic that distinguishes the at least one of the one or more concepts from other ones of the one or more concepts in the tag cloud.

6. The method according to claim 5, further comprising:

tracking the accesses with respect to at least one of the graph and documents; and

modifying at least one of the category nodes and the tag cloud contained in the graph based upon the accesses.

7. The method according to claim 6, wherein tracking the accesses further comprises receiving a selection of a category node displayed in the graph, said method further comprising:

modifying the tag cloud to only show concepts determined to be relevant to the selected category node.

8. The method according to claim 6, wherein tracking the accesses further comprises receiving a selection of a category node displayed in the graph, said method further comprising:

modifying a visual representation of one or more of the concepts based upon a relevance level of the one or more of the concepts to the selected category node.

9. The method according to claim 4, wherein constructing the graph further comprises constructing the graph to depict those category paths that have been generated for the concepts relevant to the documents that the have been accessed and omitting concepts relevant to documents that the have not been accessed.

10. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a selection of at least one of a category node and a concept;

identifying one or more documents determined to be relevant to the one of the selected at least one of the category node and concept; and

displaying the identified one or more documents in addition to the graph.

11. An apparatus for visually representing a hierarchy of category nodes that identify one or more concepts, said apparatus comprising:

a visualization module configured to track accesses to documents and to determine one or more concepts that are relevant to the accessed documents;

a category path determining module configured to determine one or more category paths through the hierarchy of category nodes for the determined one or more concepts, wherein each of the one or more category paths is weighted according to a relevance between the one or more category paths and respective ones of the one or more selected concepts;

a relevance determining module configured to determine relevance levels for the category nodes with respect to the determined one or more concepts based upon the determined one or more category paths; and

a graph constructing module configured to construct a graph depicting a visual representation of the relevance levels determined for each of the category nodes in the hierarchy of category nodes.

12. The apparatus according to claim 11, wherein the hierarchy of category nodes is based upon category and concept relationships defined in a labeled text data source.

13. The apparatus according to claim 11, wherein the relevance determining module is further configured to set each of the category nodes to an initial predetermined score and to assign scores to each of the category nodes based upon the weights assigned to the one or more category paths for the one or more concepts, wherein the scores correspond to the relevance levels of the category nodes to the one or more concepts.

14. The apparatus according to claim 11, wherein the graph constructing module is further configured to generate a visual representation of the one or more concepts generated for the accessed documents, wherein the visual representation graphically depicts at least one distinguishing characteristic associated with the tracked accesses to the documents.

15. The apparatus according to claim 14, wherein the graph constructing module is further configured to generate a tag cloud containing the one or more concepts, wherein at least one of the one or more concepts has at least one characteristic that distinguishes the at least one of the one or more concepts from other ones of the one or more concepts in the tag cloud.

16. The apparatus according to claim 15, further comprising:

an access tracking module configured to track the accesses with respect to at least one of the graph and documents; and

wherein the graph constructing module is further configured to modifying at least one of the category nodes and the tag cloud contained in the graph based upon the accesses.

17. The apparatus according to claim 14, wherein the graph constructing module is further configured to construct the graph to depict those category paths that have been generated for the concepts relevant to the documents that have been accessed and omitting concepts relevant to documents that have not been accessed.

18. The apparatus according to claim 11, wherein the visualization module is further configured to receive a selection of at least one of a category node and a concept, to identify one or more documents determined to be relevant to the one of the selected at least one of the category node and concept, and to display the identified one or more documents in addition to the graph.

19. A computer readable storage medium on which is embedded one or more computer programs, said one or more computer programs implementing a method of visually representing a hierarchy of category nodes that identify one or more concepts, said one or more computer programs comprising a set of instructions for:

tracking a accesses to documents;

determining one or more concepts that are relevant to the accessed documents;

determining one or more category paths through the hierarchy of category nodes for the determined one or more concepts, wherein each of the one or more category paths is weighted according to a relevance between the one or more category paths and respective ones of the one or more concepts;

determining relevance levels for the category nodes with respect to the determined one or more concepts based upon the generated one or more category is paths; and

constructing a graph depicting a visual representation of the relevance levels determined for each of the category nodes in the hierarchy of category nodes.

20. The computer readable storage medium according to claim 19, said one or more computer programs comprising a set of instructions for:

generating a visual representation of the one or more concepts generated for the accessed documents, wherein the visual representation graphically depicts at least one distinguishing characteristic associated with the tracked accesses to the documents.