The User Study And Interaction Design Of Law Forum Information Visualization

Case argument plays an important part in students'law study. They still use the forum as a argument tool. Although forum provides enough freedom for the students to analyze issues, it weakens the discussion efficiency. Argument information visualization can enrich law students' discussing ways. There are several argument information visualization systems, they common features are all based on argument model. These case argument systems ensured that the argument could produce more reasonable results. But the reasoning style couldn't accepted by law students, and these case argument visualization systems can't be used widely by law students. The author attempts to design a case argument visualization system that fits students' habit to improve the efficiency of law students' discussion. In order to ensure the usefulness system, the user-centered design methods was used during the design process.The thesis work includes four parts:literature review, user research and case argument model extraction, visualization system interactive design and system evaluation. In the literature research phase, the main purpose is understanding the theories on case argument, such as dialogue theory and information visualization theory, Based on these theoretical studies, the author found out the focus point and the thesis direction. In the user research and case argument model extraction stage, Case argument habit of law students had been summarized firstly. Then, we did the content analysis on the comments in a forum which implicates the process of law students' case argument on Toulmin model; Finally, the author extracted the new case argument model, then validated and improved the model by focus groups. During the last two stages, based on user initially needs model and cognitive theory the author designed the high-fidelity prototype of the system and assess the system validity by user testing. Finally, the author built the system implement framework further by Flash and Asp.netThe results of user testing shows that users could use the system to complete the case argument efficiently; the contrast result with the forum proved the system's effectiveness in helping law students' case argument. The study also proved the design method can be effectively applied to the visualization system design. After summarized the research, the author puts forward the research flow about how to use user-centered design methods in information visualization.