Title: A user-centred approach to information visualisation in nano-health

Authors: Hui Yang; Kaizhi Tang; Xiong Liu; Lemin Xiao; Roger Xu; Soundar Kumara

Addresses: Saltside Technologies AB, Gothenburg 41301, Sweden ' Intelligent Automation, Inc., 15400 Calhoun Dr #400, Rockville, MD 20855, USA ' Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN, USA ' Intelligent Automation, Inc., 15400 Calhoun Dr #400, Rockville, MD 20855, USA ' Intelligent Automation, Inc., 15400 Calhoun Dr #400, Rockville, MD 20855, USA ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, 233 Leonhard Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA

Abstract: Studying the Nanomaterial Environmental Impact (NEI) is a critical task in nano-health and safety. However, there is a lack of visual analytic tools that can efficiently query and present large-scale bibliography metadata, NEI characterisations and nanomaterial toxicity. This paper presents the user-centred design and implementation efforts of developing the Information Visualisation (InfoVis) module for NEI studies. We first describe a user-centred design approach to task analysis, visual representation selection and iterative validation and improvement. We then show how existing techniques, such as graph simplification, enriched visualisation algorithms and interactive features, can be usefully combined to aid users in gaining insights. We implement our techniques as a Drupal module, and demonstrate the utility of InfoVis through scenarios of constructing co-authorship network, nanomaterial terms co-occurrence network, NanoParticle Ontology tree and nanomaterial toxicity plot. Our design is supportive for analysts and researchers to identify concepts and relationships in NEI studies.

Keywords: nanomaterials; environmental impact; nanotoxicity; information visualisation; graph visualisation; data mining; nanotechnology; user-centred design; nano-health; health and safety; ontology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBRA.2016.077122

International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications, 2016 Vol.12 No.2, pp.95 - 115

Accepted: 29 Aug 2015
Published online: 21 Jun 2016 *

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