Utilizing Treemaps for Multicriterial Search of 3D Objects

Abstract

We propose a treemap based interface for presentation of search results according to multiple search criteria. Different colors are used to represent the relevance of each item in the database according to the different search criteria, while at the same time the treemap based representation allows the user to visually identify relevant groups of data, exploiting the hierarchical organization of the items in the database. Items are ranked according to each criterion and an aggregate ranking is computed using the Borda algorithm. Furthermore, appropriate interaction mechanisms are provided in order to assist the user in refining the presentation of the returned items and weigh the contribution of different criteria for retrieving combined search results. The Princeton benchmark 3D object database is used for this study, nevertheless the technique presented is appropriate for any multicriterial search application and in particular in cases where the data is organized hierarchically.