Graphical Interface that Supports Users’ Trial-and-Error Process of Text Mining

Abstract

This paper proposes an interface for supporting a user's activity of mining useful information from a large amount of text. Finding useful knowledge from texts requires a trial-and-error process; thus, a user’s information request becomes clearer with the execution of the process. Our proposed interface attempts to expedite this process. When a user performs a text mining task, it is necessary for him or her to use combinations of different text analysis tools to analyze the text. In order to combine different text mining tools, the Total Environment for Text Data Mining (TETDM) was recently proposed. However, currently, the interface of TETDM is not sufficiently good to perform such a task; it does not provide a means to combine/switch text analysis tools smoothly. In this study, we redesigned the interface of TETDM such that it enables smooth switching/combining of text analysis tools. The proposed interface includes a graph in which nodes denote the tools and links denote the processing flow between them. The interface facilitates (1) combining/switching text analysis tools by directly manipulating nodes, and (2) understanding the current state of each tool.