Interactive Exploration of Discovered Knowledge: A Methodology for Interaction, and Usability Studies

Mika Klemettinen, Heikki Mannila, and Hannu Toivonen: Interactive Exploration of Discovered Knowledge: A Methodology for Interaction, and Usability Studies. Report C-1996-3, Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, February 1996. 27 pages. <http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/TR/C-1996/3>

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Abstract

We introduce a methodology for knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) where one first discovers large collections of patterns at once, and then performs interactive retrievals from the collection of patterns. The proposed methodology suits very well such KDD formalisms as association and episode rules, where large collections of potentially interesting rules can be found efficiently. We present methods that support interactive exploration of large collections of association and episode rules. With these methods the user can flexibly specify the focus of interest, and also iteratively refine it. We claim that the proposed methodology is very usable for a class of knowledge discovery problems. We describe an implementation of the explorative part. We discuss some usability aspects and usability testing of KDD systems, and present an actual usability test of the described implementation.

Index Terms

Categories and Subject Descriptors:
H.3.3 [Information Systems]: Information Storage and Retrieval - Information Search and Retrieval
H.5.2 [Information Systems]: Information Interfaces and Presentation - User Interfaces

General Terms: KDD methodology, KDD process, System usability, Usability tests

Additional Key Words and Phrases: Data mining, Knowledge discovery, Interactive data mining, User interfaces, Association rules, Episodes