Making sense of an electronic document - Visualization strategies for concept presentation

Abstract

Electronic documents are increasingly becoming the norm today. Electronic document management systems solve many of the storage and retrieval problems inherent in paper filing systems while reducing business costs. However, with conversion of paper documents to electronic form, and an increasing amount of data being produced in electronic form, an mployee today is hard-pressed in time simply trying to make sense of all he is required to read on his monitor. In order to help manage information overload and to help 'connect the dots' among various pieces of information, it is important that mechanisms and tools be developed for sieving the important bits of information, collecting and assimilating them in a useful manner and presenting them for easy digestion. In this paper, we discuss 4 visualization strategies - 1) concept/mind maps 2) taxonomies/facets/ontologies 3) questions and answers (Q&A) and 4) summarization that should be adopted to help present the concepts in an electronic document for easy comprehension. Such strategies will go a long way in cutting down the reading time of the employee, leading to productivity increases and cost savings for the enterprise. © 2006 IEEE.