Summary of the Article
INFORMATION VISUALIZATION AND PROPOSING NEW INTERFACE FOR MOVIE
RETRIEVAL SYSTEM (IMDb)
By (Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010)
Assignment 2
Adrian Bisek
Introduction
The paper I decided to critique is titled Information Visualization and Proposing
New Interface for Movie Retrieval System (IMDb) and it is from the Turkish Online Journal
of Distance Education. With interests in cinema entertainment and the Internet Movie
Database (IMDb) website, I was drawn to this research paper. IMDb is a website that is an
online database which consists information on films, television, actors, production crew,
etc. The website is one the most popular in it’s category and it is ranked 52 on global traffic
(Alexa Internet, Inc., 2012). The site is well designed and well organized for the purpose of
searching movies or actors and obtaining detailed information about one or the other.
Notice that simple questions such as how many horror movies came out in 2012 might be
difficult to see. Also, try to identify an actor who stars in one blockbuster action movie but
also stars in other action movies or is the actor starring in other film genres.
Reading through the abstract and introduction of the paper, the researchers are
drawn to make the IMDb search results better as it employs a traditional approach to
database queries with textual response in forming scrolling lists. The plan is to create a
prototype 2D interface application to give the user fluid control over the data that is
presented. At the moment, IMDb is a website that has a lot of details of a movie, or an actor
in a page form. Relaying on scroll bars for a page and hyperlinks to get from one detail to
another; there are not many interactive elements for comparing or noticing relations
between actors/actresses and their movies. Research has gone into the study to find
appropriate ways to create this prototype that includes: identifying the problems, using
design principles as a framework to approach the problem, and record the outcomes. The
goal of the paper is to create a final 2D proposed visual interface and run experiments with
participants to compare the user experience, results and performance analysis.
Problem
The main problem in this research paper and of most data visualization artists is
that we have very powerful search engines, which search through large collections of data.
IMDb is a very large database of movies, cast, crew, and it is linked to lots of multimedia
such as audio, videos and images. There is an instinct to look for a better way to present the
results visually. Similar to search engines that search through inventory websites such as
libraries and shopping stores, the results layout a render of long linear lists. As stated by
the researchers in this paper, this can lead to “tiresome and tedious navigation due to the
long lists” (Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010). Search engines have very sophisticated
algorithms which can filter out lots of data to give users results in the order they most
likely are looking for, much like Google. The user can sort results by date or alphabetical
order, etc. For the purpose of browsing through movies, this doesn’t help users wander the
database to other movies that might interest them. Users have to work their way through
several pages to get more information. The data is sorted in a list where the items are
hyperlinked to their corresponding pages. The example from IMDb is that a user starts at a
movie’s page, then the user can click on an actor's name and it takes them to the actor’s
page. This page lists other movies that the actor has been in as well as links to images of the
actor. If the user clicks on another movie, it goes to the next page of that movie where
there’s a link to a trailer and so on. There doesn’t seem to be significant information about
the genre of the movie, the actor’s involvement or fluid interactivity in the display. The
webpage is restricted to a single screen space with a limited amount of pixels. This
single page is limited to interactivity as well as visually viewing all the data at once as noted
in (Figure 1).
The paper describes several direct issues such as the “searched results of IMDb are
represented in a typical linear fashion and that it is stuck to the standard style of click the
link to view details. The first page doesn’t show movie’s information such as genres,
pictures and actors of each movie” (Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010). With their
study, they would like
to conduct a few phases
to help understand how
to organize all this
information about
movies, actors, and
multimedia accordingly.
Approach
The researchers
approach involves three
Figure 1 - IMDb screenshot obtained October 2012
Notice the list of the Genre Horror, and the user’s option to refine the list by
using links.
IMDb.com – screenshot retrieved October 2012
phases. “Phase one introduces the data preparation that consists of a list of over 20,000
Actors/Actresses.” (Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010). They use a method called
[surface crawling] to gather their data which is not explained in much detail, but is most
likely gathering the basic information such as actors names, movie, year, genre, some meta
information, attached to images, attached to videos, etc. “Phase two explains the data
analyses and results and this trend is further complemented by extracting some
summarized information from the IMDb, mainly to speed up our visualization”
(Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010). They limited their data to just actors/actresses
names, movies of per actor/actress, and the year, genre and any documentation related to
each movie giving their prototype and research questions more focus. “Phase three is the
design of the visualization” (Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010). The main purpose is to
produce an interactive 2D interface that is displayed on one page. Their research shows
that a graphical model communicates with users through iconic presentation gives the
users more control over the information retrieval process. Thus the prototype will be an
interface with different colours and different shapes or icons and “the most functional rules
for information retrieval visualization include proximity, closure and continuity”
(Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010).
Using these design principles as a framework for their prototype: proximity refers
to “the grouping of elements,” (The Gestalt Principles) closure refers to “when the brain
perceives boundaries of objects” (The Gestalt Principles) and continuity refers to “making
sense of the display and interpret the meaning of the icons or any shapes that are used”
(The Gestalt Principles). The main tactic is that the researchers are planning their design
with icons and shapes to represent concepts as well as colour to sort, group or categorize.
It is also important for them to include minimal text so the information can be controlled
better. With the IMDb dataset and its rich information on each movie and actor scope, the
paper illustrates some icons and symbols to help the user see more of the information.
Technique
First, the paper describes a visual key
of a list of genres and how they coordinated
each genre to a colour. Ware and Beatty in
1988 said, many visualization techniques
display different data values by varying colour.
In this case; Action is light blue, Comedy is
orange and so on. In the form of a pie chart
(icon for the movie), the user can see if an
Figure 2 - Each movie may have more than one genre,
using the slice technique for one genre is specified.
Retrieved from
(Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010)
actor is regularly starring in a specific genre or if
they are acting in other genres. (Figure 2)
demonstrates the pie chart, as well as how some
Figure 3 – Symbol of main actor
Retrieved from
(Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010)
movies may be more than one genre. Within these
circles, the study explains that a star symbol (Figure 3) in the center can illustrate if the
actor was the main actor or was a support cast member.
Then, these circles (individual movies) are
arranged within year blocks (grouping of movies in a
year) to easily identify the actor’s film history.
Interaction would aim at giving detailed information
when items are highlighted. “Attractive shapes to
amplify user’s perception” (Etemadpour, Massod, &
Belaton, 2010). An information triangle card, (Figure
4) provides more information about attributes
Figure 4 - Each trident holds the
overview of movie information.
Retrieved from
(Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010)
detailing the actors/actresses, documents, and pictures that are directly tied to a normal
reading view of the IMDb page.
Altogether, these visual aids are joined into the final 2D proposed visual user
interface, (Figure 5).
Featuring many of the Dix
and Ellis interaction types
such as highlighting and
focus, accessing extra info
and linking
representations (Shaw,
2012) the interface looks
like there would be lots of
interaction. Across the
top is the title of the
Figure 5 – A detailed overview of the proposed 2d interface
Retrieved from (Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010)
unique data being analyzed and in this case it is Jessica Alba, an actress. In this multi
window view, photos appear across the top, title and overviews of movies in the triangle of
information on the left and the year blocks on the right which include the actresses movie
history, whether she starred in the movie and what genre the movie is for that
corresponding year. Overall, the interface acts like the IMDb page but with interacting
windows to show more of the information about the actor’s history.
Outcomes
The team did research into the existing IMDb issues and they discovered that a new
design was necessary. It should be on one page and be more interactive. Presenting the
information in 2D windows allows for more information displayed and is easier to navigate
multiple forms of information such as actors and their movies. The possibility of different
zones or windows allow the interaction in one window be shown in multiple areas.
Interaction such as linking and brushing can be utilized between these areas. The
proposed interface still shows details like the original IMDb interface but adds
to the movie year blocks giving visual aid to what types of movies and how many movies.
To see this work in action, the researchers created a simple prototype and had participants
who had no experience related to
information visualization techniques.
There were a total of 12 participants
that were part of two groups: novice
and experienced. The genders were
split with six male and six female.
They were given five minutes of
training on the system and then were
Figure 6 – Survey Results: T-Values vs. Qualitative parameter.
Wonderful being the highest.
Retrieved from (Etemadpour, Massod, & Belaton, 2010)
asked to perform two tasks. The total
time of the focus group was about 20
to 30 minutes. Overall, there was positive qualitative results as displayed in (Figure 6) but
participants also state that it was not an easy interface to work with.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the paper was going in the right direction where browsing through
IMDb today can be a tiresome and tedious task if the user is browsing for interesting
comparisons. In 1998, Card, Mackinlay and Shneiderman said that “the use of computersupported, interactive, visual representations of data to amplify cognition” and that’s what
the study was trying to address – to tap into the powerful human visual capabilities to
analyze data, gain new insights and see the invisible. The way that IMDb is presented today
is a very linear and the website is directed to searchers who have a general idea for what
they are looking. For example, the user knows the movie title and they are looking for
specific information on the movie such as how long is the movie?, and what was the name
of that main actor in that movie? General browsing in IMDb is likely based on movie rating.
For example, browsing for movies 8 out of 10 or higher: if a movie is rated 9 out of 10, the
user can find detailed information about it. Since 2010 (when the paper was written)
IMDb’s design has changed slightly. The elements remain the same but the social network
integration has deepened where there is a recommendation option [user might like this
because other users have]. I feel that the way IMDb is set up works really well for the
purpose of searching movie information. But, the main goal of information visualization is
to amplify a deeper level of understanding and insights into the underlying process. (Tufte,
1990). The prototype created in the study is not the prettiest, but perhaps helps with the
simple tasks they suggested. Overall, I think there’s some more work and tweaking
required to achieve a better interface that IMDb currently runs, and this prototype is a
stepping stone.
References
Alexa Internet, Inc. (2012). The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved October 2012, from
Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/imdb.com
Card, S., Mackinlay, J. D., & & Shneiderman, B. (1999). Readings in Information Visualization.
San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc.
Dix, A., & Ellis, G. (1998). Starting Simple - adding value to static visualisation through
simple interaction. Advanced Visual Interfaces (pp. 124-134). L'Aquila - ITALY:
ACM Press.
Etemadpour, R., Massod, M., & Belaton, B. (2010). Information Visualization and Proposing
New Interface for Movie Retrieval System (IMDb). Turkish Online Journal of
Distance Education , 11 (3), 162-172.
Shaw, C. (2012). IAT 814 [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved October 2012, from
http://www.sfu.ca/~shaw/iat814/syllabus.htm
The Gestalt Principles. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2012, from Spokane Falls Community
College:
http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gest
altprinc.htm
Tufte, E. R. (1990). Envisioning Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
Ware, C., & Beatty, J. C. (1988). Using color dimensions to display data dimensions. Human
Factors , 30(2) (April), 127-142.