We explore how the availability of a sensemaking tool influences users' knowledge externalization strategies. On a large display, users were asked to solve an intelligence analysis task with or without a bidirectionally linked concept-graph (BLC) to organize insights into concepts (nodes) and relations (edges). In BLC, both nodes and edges maintain "deep links" to the exact source phrases and sections in associated documents. In our control condition, we were able to reproduce previously described spatial organization behaviors using document windows on the large display. When using BLC, however, we found that analysts apply spatial organization to BLC nodes instead, use significantly less display space and have significantly fewer open windows.
Investigative analysts who work with collections of text documents connect embedded threads of evidence in order to formulate hypotheses about plans and activities of potential interest. As the number of documents and the corresponding number of concepts and entities within the documents grow larger, sense-making processes become more and more difficult for the analysts. We have developed a visual analytic system called Jigsaw that represents documents and their entities visually in order to help analysts examine reports more efficiently and develop theories about potential actions more quickly. Jigsaw provides multiple coordinated views of document entities with a special emphasis on visually illustrating connections between entities across the different documents. The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) project at Tufts' Academic Technology department provides faculty and students with tools to successfully integrate digital resources into their teaching and learning. VUE provides a visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information and an OKI-compliant software bridge for connecting to FEDORA-based digital repositories. Using VUE's concept mapping interface, faculty and students design customized semantic networks of digital resources drawing from digital libraries, local files and the Web. The resulting content maps can then be viewed and exchanged online. 