feedback on clusters view

[ymgan]

Hi @MortenHofft

I remember you asked for feedback on the clusters view in the hosted portal community call. @Antonarctica and I finally sat together and had a look at it. Here's our feedback:

cool Cool COOL!!!!!

Anton exclaimed "COOL!!" a million times while clicking through the nodes today!! We think that it's really well done and we appreciate the effort very much!! The feedback below is just for icing on the cake!

Include entity selected in the clusters tab

https://www.biodiversity.aq/occurrence/search?entity=1434623051&from=30&view=CLUSTERS

We think that including the entity selected (pointed by the red arrow) in the clusters tab (the overlay in screenshot) and have it highlighted in a different colour will be helpful for user to compare it with the other nodes from the same cluster. To us, it is a cluster of 4, but we saw 3 entities in the cluster tab so we were a little confused in the beginning.

Meaning of node with dark outline

We aren't sure what it means when a node has darker outlined (pointed by the red arrow) in the screenshot above. We guessed that it is the occurrence record scoped in our hosted portal, but it wasn't clear to us.

How are clusters sorted?

We are curious how clusters are sorted because that would help users to decide whether they want to browse through the pages because sometimes there can be hundreds or thousands of pages.

Pagination for the clusters

Depending on how clusters are sorted, user may be interested to see the last page or enter a page number. This would be more helpful than clicking the next button.

What does the puzzle icon mean?

We are not sure what the puzzle icon means (pointed by red arrow). We believe that it means the data from all of the extensions associated with the record but we aren't sure.

Not sure where to start when first exploring

Our initial responses when we saw the view was we weren't sure where to start. Not sure how constructive this comment is because I don't know how to present this information better. But as we drill down to the nodes and edges, we understand what is happening and we appreciate the work and thought went into this.

Thank you so much for working on this!!

[ymgan]

also, spotted a small typo in the legend

contains differemnt identifications

[ManonGros]

Thanks @ymgan !

To add to your feedback (so @MortenHofft has it all in one place).

Yes the feature is super cool!
I agree that it would be good to add a legend for the dark circle (it isn't obvious that it is the occurrence in the selection).

Highlighting the occurrence (and cluster) that was clicked on would also be helpful.

In addition to that:

• In the About section, it would be good to put a reference to the documentation on how those clusters are generated. Right now we have this blogpost, when we get the new technical documentation website, there will be a page for it.
• I really like to be able to see the assertions supporting the relationship between records when hovering the edges of the graph. However, the text is difficult to read (it is a narrow window with no separations between the assertions).
  • Could the window be a bit wider?
  • Could there be a visual separation between the assertions? At the very least, commas.

I think that if those points were addressed, the feature could be in production.

I have some ideas of things I would like to see if they were possible. I don't know if those could be implemented at all. Feel free to discard.

1. I would love to be able to select a cluster and have all the occurrences in my selection (so I could generate a download). The current pages with related records only show the related pair. With the visual feature, we can see all the vertices. It would be great to get them all in one table instead of having to click on all the occurrences.
2. That one would be more of a "nice to have": I would like to see the clusters based on assertions (not just the final linking). For example, show only the occurrences that have the same date and species names. I can imagine this would be difficult to do and may not be worth it. It would be nice to be able to explore the data that way.

[MortenHofft]

I've looked at above and implemented what I could at this point. Some things I cannot do at this point.

• How are clusters sorted?
  • They are not. You do not search for clusters, but for records that are clustered. Without any sorting.
  • So pagination doesn't make much sense as they are random.
• Download clusters
  • I cannot do that at this point, because we do not have search by GBIF IDs - also @timrobertson100 suggests that if we go this way we should probably have a proper download format for it
• Search by cluster features
  • Would be great. But clusters do not exists and as such do not have properties we can search. But makes sense. But would also require work in all layers.