A framework for user interface design in visual information retrieval

This paper describes the user interface framework of the VizIR project (Eidenberger et al., 2002). VizIR is an open project to develop a Java-based, extendible and well-documented asset framework for visual information retrieval. The paper includes a description of the visual components and their class structure, the communication between panels as well as between visual components and query engines. Visual components include media panels, controls and renderer classes. The panels communicate through media events. Communication of user interfaces and query engines is based on the multimedia retrieval markup language (MRML). MRML is an XML-based language that was developed by the University of Geneva. To be usable with our querying paradigm, we extend MRML with additional elements. The paper contains a short implementation section with details on the Java components used, Java 3D graphics libraries (GLAJava and Java3D) and Java XML parsing. Finally, an appendix is included containing the MRML extension.