February 20th, 2pm, the Thesis Defense: "Attribute-driven Visualization of Linked Data Entities" by Ömer Bayram will take place at HCC Lab.

Abstract

Linked Data promotes the transition from the traditional Web of documents to the Web of data and rethinks traditional approaches to data management and use. However, the development, management, and use of Linked Data presents significant challenges. The large amounts of complex, distributed and heterogeneous data that are common in today's technological and information-rich society can be confusing and cognitively burdensome for humans. This makes it more difficult for people to understand the data and to recognize the relationships within it. One of the solutions to this problem that has been developed in research is visualization, which makes use of human perceptual abilities and has developed numerous visualization applications and models for this purpose.

In this work, a literature study on existing visualizations or models of Linked Data was carried out using the methods of comparative analysis from Grounded Theory. From this study, a State of the Art Design Space of Linked Data visualization was formed and the realization was gained that there is a research deficit or gap in research regarding the representation of the individual entities themselves in the visualization of Linked Data.

In order to contribute to research in this area, a visualization model was developed that takes into account the attributes of the entities when visualizing them and proposes visual variables based on empirical theories of human perceptual abilities from the literature.

A workshop with visualization experts was conducted to examine the extent to which the attribute-driven visualization of linked data entities solves the problem of visualization of large linked data sets and to test the developed visualization model in a concrete use case. In this workshop, requirements for the visualization model were also determined.

The hypothesis-based analysis of the workshop showed that the visualization model can be used for the visualization of linked data entities, but does not take into account the special requirements of the visualization of linked data entities in its entirety. The identified difficulties and requirements for the visualization of linked data entities as well as other visual variables found in the workshop were taken up and synthesized together with the insights from the initial analysis of the literature. From this, new dimensions for the visualization model were developed, which are especially inherent to the requirements and possibilities of the visualization of linked data.

The defence will be held in german.

First assesor: Prof. Dr. Claudia Müller-Birn
Second assesor: Prof. Dr. Marian Margraf

Location: HCC Lab, Königin-Luise-Straße 24/26, room 120