[IxDA Discuss] Examples for data-mining UI

[Fredrik Gunne]

Hi!

 

I'm looking for examples or comments that would guide me in the right
direction to solve the following problem (I'm not an experienced UI
developer):

 

We are developing an application used to administer and browse data
around a data-mining system. 

At the core of the system are the objects. Examples are Customer,
Product, Vendor, Department, etc. Each such object have different set of
attributes (name, address, price, etc).

 

The objects are then categorized along different "dimensions". For
instance, a Customer can have multiple dimension such as "Line of
business", "Size", etc. The object Department probably only have one
dimension, such as "Division". 

 

Dimensions can be further categorized. For instance "Division" (used to
categorize Department objects) may be categorized along the "Company"
dimension. 

Dimensions have attributes as well - "Company" may have attributes such
as name, number of people employed etc.

 

The application we're developing shall be used to do the things like:

*         Most importantly, provide a clear visualization of the
hierarchy of dimensions according to which core objects are categorized.

*         Browse the instances of core objects in certain dimensions, or
"All" when no dimension has been chosen. 

*         Browse the instances of dimensions

*         A powerful yet easy-to-use filtering/search mechanism used
while browsing.

*         Adding, removing and modifying instances of core objects (e.g.
creating the customer "Volvo") as well as instances of dimensions (e.g.
modifying the dimension "Hotel trade"). 
(One thing that makes this challenging is that each new object or
dimension need to be categorized. For instance, a new customer must be
categorized along "Line of business" and "Size". 

 

One thing that is out of scope (currently...) is defining the hierarchy
of dimensions.

 

I hope I have expressed the problem reasonably clear - I'd be happy to
provide more details. 

Thanks!

 

 

Fredrik Gunne

Gunne Consulting AB

Email: fredrik at gunne.se <mailto:fredrik at gunne.se> 

Phone: +46 70 276 53 03