A Thinking Support System for Idea Inspiration Using Spring Model

Abstract

This paper proposes a thinking support system for idea inspiration. The system visualizes data extracted from texts on a network and represents them in two dimensional metric space on a spring model. Up to now many tools which give a person a trigger which extend idea have been proposed. The problem of these system is that these tools are not equipped with powerful interactive interface in order that user's point of view can reflect to the system. This interactive interface is important, because it makes user enable to get more various points of view to reach new idea via this interface. In this system, through extending spring model method, an interactive interface is provided. The system visualizes similarity relations between texts and keywords in two dimensional metric space. Furthermore a user can request this system to add, move and delete each object. At this time it can gradually be arranged after the request. The system can show a process when it visualizes a new arrangement. Finally through experiments, the proposed system is shown to be effective for giving a person a trigger to extend idea. In future we try to merge other thinking support systems which support brain storming and kJ method.