EZChoOser

Updated: February 11, 2008; G. Waloszek

EZChooser

Figure 1: EZChooser user interface (from My EZChooser Website, Verizon)

 

EZChooser with items that match the restrictions

Figure 2: EZChooser user interface. The upper frame contains feature dimensions, the lower frame lists cars that match the restrictions (from original article)

 

From histogram to item vectors

Figure 3: From histogram (top), to bargram, bargram with value distribution, to item vectors (bottom) (from original article)

 

Purpose

EZChooser is a tool designed to help general consumers solve the task of choosing one item from many based on attributes.

 

Applications

EZChooser is a consumer-oriented variant of the Attribute Explorer. It is a tool designed to help general consumers solve the task of choosing one item from many based on attributes. For example, users may use EZChooser to choose a car from e selection of cars based on attributes such as make, rating, price, fuel efficiency, etc. The technique is based on parallel bargrams associated with item vectors (see figure 3), an extension to related work in dynamic querying and attribute exploration using histograms.

For a recent, more thorough presentation of the EZChooser tool, see Chapter 6.2 Selecting one from many in Robert Spence, Information Visualization, 2nd edition.

See also the Attribute Explorer.

Authors, Date

Robert Spence, Kent Wittenburg; 1995-96

Links, Papers

  • Wittenburg, K., Lanning, T., Heinrichs, M., & Stanton, M. (2001). Parallel bargrams for consumer-based information exploration and choice. ACM, Proceedings of UIST '01, pp. 51-60. (PDF)
  • Verizon: myEZChooser Website (probably not changed since 2000)
  • Robert Spence (2007). Information Visualization (2nd Edition). Prentice-Hall (Pearson) (chapter 6.2 Selecting one from many)
  • Robert Spence (2002). Sensitivity encoding to support information space navigation:a design guideline. Information Visualization, 1(2), pp. 120-120 (HTML)
  • Robert Spence's Website (last update 2002)