Project archives are becoming increasingly large and complex. On construction projects in particular, the increasing amount of information and the increasing complexity of its structure make searching and exploring information in the project archive challenging and time-consuming. This research investigates a query-driven approach that represents new forms of contextual information to help users understand the set of documents resulting from queries of construction project archives. Specifically, this research extends query-driven interface research by representing three types of contextual information: (1) the temporal context is represented in the form of a timeline to show when each document was created; (2) the search-relevance context shows exactly which of the entered keywords matched each document; and (3) the usage context shows which project participants have accessed or modified a file. We implemented and tested these ideas within a prototype query-driven interface we call VisArchive. VisArchive employs a combination of multi-scale and multi-dimensional timelines, color-coded stacked bar charts, additional supporting visual cues and filters to support searching and exploring historical project archives. The timeline-based interface integrates three interactive timelines as focus + context visualizations. The feasibility of using these visual design principles is tested in two types of project archives: searching construction project archives of an educational building project and tracking of software defects in the Mozilla Thunderbird project. These case studies demonstrate the applicability, usefulness and generality of the design principles implemented.

中文翻译：

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VisArchive：基于时间和相关性的可视界面，用于搜索，浏览和浏览项目档案

项目档案变得越来越大，越来越复杂。特别是在建设项目中，信息量的增加和其结构的复杂性的增加使得在项目档案库中搜索和探索信息既困难又费时。这项研究调查了一种查询驱动的方法，该方法代表了新形式的上下文信息，以帮助用户理解由建设项目档案的查询产生的文档集。具体而言，该研究通过表示三种类型的上下文信息来扩展查询驱动的界面研究：（1）时间上下文以时间轴的形式表示，以显示每个文档的创建时间；（2）搜索相关性上下文准确显示哪个输入的关键字与每个文档匹配；（3）使用情况上下文显示哪些项目参与者已访问或修改了文件。我们在称为VisArchive的原型查询驱动界面中实现并测试了这些想法。VisArchive结合了多尺度和多维时间轴，颜色编码的堆叠条形图，其他支持的视觉提示和过滤器，以支持搜索和浏览历史项目档案。基于时间轴的界面将三个交互式时间轴集成为焦点+上下文可视化。在两种类型的项目档案中测试了使用这些视觉设计原理的可行性：搜索教育建筑项目的建筑项目档案，以及跟踪Mozilla Thunderbird项目中的软件缺陷。这些案例研究证明了其适用性，