Case Study

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A Comparative Study of Continuous and Discrete

Visualisation of Tourism Information
Sudarshan Venkataiaha,
Nalin Shardaa, and
Mohan Ponnadaa
a
School of Computer Science and Mathematics
Victoria University, Australia
nalin.sharda@vu.edu.au
{sudarshan.gorrepati, mohan.ponnada}@students.vu.edu.au
Abstract
This paper presents a comparative analysis of Continuous versus Discrete Visualisation of
tourism information. With remarkable web development in the recent years, a broad range of
tourism information is distributed over millions of websites. This is a boon as well as a problem
for the user. When information on a tour is needed, the user has to explore various web sites
and collate discrete chunks of information, we call this Discrete Visualisation. To solve this
problem we are developing an Intelligent Visual Travel Recommender System (IVTRS) that
finds information form relevant web sites and presents it as a video clip, i.e. Continuous
Visualisation. This paper presents an overview of the architecture and the prototype of an
IVTRS that presents Continuous Visualisation. A usability study was conducted – using a
prototype – with eight users comprising beginner, intermediate as well as advanced users. This
study demonstrated that users found Continuous Visualisation easier to work with and to obtain
the required information.
Keywords: Intelligent Visual Travel Recommender System (IVTRS), Visualisation, Discrete

Visualisation, Continuous Visualisation, Usability Study.
1 Introduction
Information technology (IT) has become an important catalyst for the modern tourism
industry. Information dissemination ability has been enhanced with the advent of the
Internet and the World Wide Web (Web). However, with the proliferation of tourism
web sites and services, it has become difficult to effectively locate useful information
(Ponnada, Jakkilinki & Sharda, 2006). Such problems are often exacerbated due to
poorly designed user interfaces (Stangenberg, 2000).
Most of the information gathered over the web is in the form of discrete chunks of
digital media content -- including text, audio, photos and video clips. Visualising
information by accessing a series of individual media elements is termed Discrete
Visualisation. We are working on developing systems that can combine such
individual chunks of digital media into a Continuous Visualisation, i.e. a continuous
audio visual presentation, almost like a video clip. Two such Continuous
Visualisation systems have been proposed for eTourism: Intelligent Visual Travel
Sudarshan Venkataiah, Nalin Sharda, and Mohan Ponnada, A Comparative Study of Continuous and
Discrete Visualisation of Tourism Information, ENTER 2008 Conference, Innsbruck, Austria, Organised by
International Federation for Information Technology and Travel & Tourism (IFITT), 23 - 25 January, 2008.
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Recommender System (IVTRS) (Ponnada, Jakkilinki & Sharda, 2006), and Tourism
Blog Visualiser (Sharda & Ponnada, 2007).
The aim of the research project reported in this paper was to compare users’ responses
to Discrete and Continuous Visualisation. We created prototypes of the proposed
Discrete and Continuous Visualisation systems using the Mozilla framework
(Jevsikova, Dagiene & Grigas, 2004). Mozilla is a collection of software tools for
creating open source web application, see http://www.mozilla.org/about [Sept., 2007].
These prototypes were used to carry out usability investigations for getting users’
feedback on Discrete and Continuous Visualisation methodologies.
Section two introduces the concepts underpinning the development of a Continuous

Visualisation system called the Intelligent Visual Travel Recommender System
(IVTRS), and briefly describes the prototype built for its usability testing. Section
three expounds Discrete and Continuous Visualisation systems, and section four
introduces our usability testing methodology. Section five gives results and analysis
of the usability testing, comparing Discrete and Continuous Visualisation.
Conclusions and opportunities for further work are given in section six.
2 Travel Recommender Systems

A Travel Recommender System (TRS) provides recommendations to prospective
travellers for tours they wish to undertake (Berka & Plößnig, 2004). A basic TRS
accepts user inputs for a proposed tour and provides recommendations for travel
itineraries based on user preferences (Ricci, 2002). The TRS retrieves information
from various sources and combines these to recommend an itinerary. However, the
user still needs to browse through individual web pages for the destinations and the
related activities on the itineraries to build a mental picture of the complete trip.
Users find it difficult to visualise their complete itinerary, because information on

destination, transportation, accommodation, entertainment, and attractions are not
fused into a seamless presentation; this is called Discrete Visualisation. This mode of
visualisation requires the user to navigate different web pages, and within individual
web pages use slider bars and other means to locate the required information. Such
navigational activities interrupt the visualisation process (Hurst, Gotz & Lauer, 2004),
and make it difficult for the user to build a holistic visual picture of the entire trip.
It is possible to build a tourism information system that overcomes this limitation and
allows the traveller to enter the destination, choices of transport, and accommodation
etc; and then view information about the entire tour as a continuous audio visual
presentation (Ponnada, Jakkilinki & Sharda, 2006), i.e. Continuous Visualisation.
By adding a layer of intelligence, this system can be enhanced to become an

Intelligent Visual Travel Recommender System (IVTRS) (Sharda & Ponnada, 2007).
Figure 1 shows the overall architecture underpinning the IVTRS.
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The IVTRS can be viewed as a system with three layers:

i) Augmented Web Layer
ii) Intelligence and Visualisation Layer
iii) Presentation Layer
The Augmented Web layer stores tourism data as Sharable Content Objects (SCOs)
based on the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). The SCORM
standard was proposed as standard data format for storing e-Learning content on the
Web; for details see http://www.adl.org [Dec. 9, 2005]. The SCORM standard can be
use for creating e-Tourism applications as well (Sharda & Ponnada, 2007). Tourism
information stored on the web as SCOs can be located by the Content Object
Repository Discovery and Registration/Resolution Architecture (CORDRA): a
companion standard of SCORM.
Fig. 1. Intelligent Visual Travel Recommender System (IVTRS) Architecture

The Intelligence part of the middle layer provides the reasoning engine of this system,
and can be built by using either of the following technologies: Expert Systems,
Semantic Web, or Artificial Neural Networks. In our projects we have used Semantic
Web Technology (Sharda & Ponnada, 2007). The Visualisation part of the middle
layer takes the relevant SCOs from the Augmented Web layer and converts these into
audio-visual presentations. A collection of SCOs can be converted into a video clip,
either using the SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) standard, or
delivered as a Flash presentation. In our projects we have used the SMIL standard, as
it provides greater flexibility in modifying the presentation based on user specified
parameters (Ponnada & Sharda, 2007).
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The Presentation Layer is responsible for the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

processes. It consists of an interface where the user can enter queries and display
preferences. The SMIL presentation video can be sent to a variety of user devices.
The display parameters (e.g. resolution, frame rate, background colour) can be
adjusted to suit the display device being used. For example, video with lower
resolution and frame rate should be sent to mobile devices such as i-Pod, Mobile
Phone and PDA (Personal Digital Assistant).
Originally we developed the Continuous Visualisation methodology for enhancing a

TRS into an IVTRS; however, its underlying concepts can also be used for
developing a tourism Blogs (Web logs) visualiser. ‘The purpose of the Blog
Visualiser is to search the Web for the most relevant Blogs (in response to a query),
collate information from these, and present it as a continuous presentation, almost like
a video clip’ (Sharda & Ponnada, 2007).
3 Discrete and Continuous Visualisation

Before fully developing these innovative visualisation systems, it is necessary to get
user feedback on the efficacy of Continuous Visualisation as compared to that of
Discrete Visualisation. To this end, prototypes of Discrete and Continuous
Visualisation systems were built using the Mozilla framework. The purpose of these
prototypes was to emulate Continuous and Discrete Visualisation scenarios, and get
user feedback on both.
Fig. 2. Discrete Visualisation of Information
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Figure 2 gives a conceptual view of Discrete Visualisation of tourism information.

Users enter queries using search oriented interfaces. Search engines such as Google
may be used by some users, and destination specific portals may be used by the
others. The search software crawls the Web or other information sources to retrieve
the relevant information and delivers it to the user as links to individual web pages.
The user then has to visit these web pages to build a holistic mental picture of the
entire trip. A Discrete Visualisation system generates a lot of information, but this
information is often disjointed. Much time and effort is required by the users in
accessing and viewing the required information.
Fig. 3. Continuous Visualisation of Information
Figure 3 gives a conceptual view of Continuous Visualisation of tourism information.

In this, discrete chunks of information gathered for one tour are combined into a
single video clip. An intelligent system such as the IVTRS creates this visualisation
by combining the most relevant media content, including text, photographs and videos
(Sharda & Ponnada, 2007).
A Continuous Visualisation system dynamically retrieves and combines the

information to be displayed. Furthermore, this information can be repurposed (i.e.
modified vis-à-vis resolution, frame rate and the level of compression) to suit a
variety of user devices, such as Notebook computer, PDA, or Mobile phone.
4 Evaluation Methodology
The purpose of this research project was to obtain users feedback on Discrete and
Continuous Visualisation of tourism information.
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The evaluation methodology used in this project is based on standard usability testing
concepts (Nielsen, 1993), with a re-engineered usability testing process to streamline
usability experiments and reduced the task completion times (Georgievski & Sharda,
2006). Nielsen (1993) suggests that even five users are enough to conduct a first-cut
usability study on any system. However, we used a cohort of eight users as we wanted
to classify these into beginner, intermediate, as well as advanced users. The same
cohort of users tested the two visualisation prototypes.
Usability testing involves measuring the quality of user experience in handling

software applications. Usability testing should be conducted before and during
application development to ensure high quality user experience. Many innovative
software systems fail due to bad or mediocre user interaction methodology, leading to
unsatisfactory user experience (Nielsen, 1993). According to the International
Standard Organization (ISO), usability is the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction
with which users can achieve a specific set of tasks in a particular environment. These
factors can be judged by providing users the opportunity to use a working system, a
prototype, or even a system mock-up. Usability testing with mock-ups or prototypes
can provide valuable feedback before substantial resources are invested in developing
the final system (Stangenberg, 2005). Our aim was to get user feedback on a
prototype before investing further resources to develop operational systems for
Continuous Visualisation.
5 Usability Testing, Results and Analysis

A well thought out testing procedure must be developed to get meaningful user
feedback (Georgievski & Sharda, 2006). This involves developing test scenarios,
which tell the participants what is expected of them. Participants are requested to
answer pre-experiment questionnaires to provide information on their background.
Post experiment questionnaires are used to get their feedback on the quality of their
experience with the system under test.
An important ethical guideline governing usability research is that the participants

must give their informed consent to participate in the tests (Ludi, 2005). All
participants in this research were given detailed information on the nature and process
of the tests, before they gave their written consent.
5.1 Participants background
These tests were conducted with eight participants, two female and six male. All
participants were over 20 years of age, possessing basic IT skills. The participant’s
were given relevant training on using the prototypes used in the study.
A pre-experiment questionnaire was administered to determine the competency level

of the participants in using computers and the Internet. Figure 4 gives a bar graph for
the percentage of beginner, intermediate and advanced users. It can be seen that the
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number of beginners and advanced users are around 40% each, while only 20% users
considered themselves as intermediate computer users.
40%
Beginner level
30% Intermediate level
Advance level Advance level

20%
Intermediate level
10%
Beginner level
0%
1
Fig. 4. Participant familiarity with using a computer
60%
50%
40%
Beginner level
Advance level
20% Advance level
0% Beginner level
Fig. 5. Participant familiarity with using the Internet

Figure 5 presents the distribution of users with respect to their expertise in using the
Internet. It is interesting to compare figures 4 and 5. It shows that many people who
feel that they are advanced Internet users, do not consider themselves as advanced
computer users. This is a common trend these days; many people who are not aware
of technical aspects of computers (and therefore do not consider themselves advanced
computer users) use the Internet with such regularity that they feel that they are
advanced Internet users. This further enhances the importance of the Internet as a
marketing tool for tourism services; and any marketing portal that can enhance the
user experience will reap the benefit with increased patronage.
5.2 Usability Test of Discrete Visualisation

The Discrete Visualisation tests were conducted such that the users had to access and
view five separate websites related to a tour on the Great Ocean Road, near
Melbourne, Australia. The scenario for this test included steps required to access the
required information to be able to answer specific questions about the tour. Full
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details of the testing procedure are presented in a Masters Thesis by Venkataiah

(2007). The post-experiment questions answered by the users are given in table 1.
Other data, such as task completion time and the error counts were also recorded to
judge how efficient discrete data collection is. However, full analysis of this
quantitative data is beyond the scope of this paper.
Table 1. Post-experiment Questions for Discrete Visualisation
Question:1 How easy was it to find the web links in the Discrete
Visualisation system?
Question:2 How easy was it to browse the web links on the Internet?
Question:3 How easy was it to find the data required for the travel, when
using the Discrete Visualisation system?
Question:4 How easy was it to use the various websites?
Question:5 How easy was it to retrieve information from these websites?
5.3 Usability Test of Continuous Visualisation

For the Continuous Visualisation tests, users were presented relevant information
from the same five web sites, combined as a video clip. Users had to login to the
system and navigate the various sections; just as a similar real application would
require.
The post-experiment questions for this test are listed in table 2. These questions also
allude to the nature of the tasks users accomplished in this test.
Table 2. Post-experiment Questions for Continuous Visualisation
Question:1 How easy was it to find the icon for the Continuous
Visualisation system application?
Question:2 How easy was it to create an account on the system?
Question:3 How easy was it to enter and alter data over the user interface
in the Continuous Visualisation system application?
Question:4 How easy was it to navigate from one page to other of the user
interface?
Question:5 How easy was it to use this application?
5.4 Result and Analysis

User feedback obtained from the post-experiment questionnaires is presented in
figures 6 and 7 for Discrete and Continuous Visualisation respectively. While the
matching questions (i.e. for the same question numbers) for the two tests are not
exactly the same, they do relate in terms of the type of activity performed by the user;
therefore, the responses to these can be used to compare the users’ experience for
Discrete and Continuous Visualisation.
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A comparison of the bar graphs for the five questions reveals that more users found
Continuous Visualisation easier to navigate and to get the required information.
Fig. 6. Usability Results for Discrete Visualisation of Information
Fig. 7. Usability Results for Continuous Visualisation of Information
The combined results are given in the right-most set of bars (labelled percentage). In
these bars, the scale reading of 1 implies 100%. The following results were obtained.
In the Discrete Visualisation system prototype:

• Users considered 32.5% of the activities very or moderately easy to perform.
• 27.5% of the activities were considered moderately difficult.
• 15% of the activities were considered very difficult.
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In the Continuous Visualisation system prototype:

• Users considered 67% of the activities very easy or moderately easy.
• 7.5% of the activities were considered moderately difficult.
• None of the activities were found to be very difficult.
For both methods, 25%of the activities were considered neither difficult nor easy.
Clearly, Continuous Visualisation was considered much easier for obtaining the
required information.
The above results demonstrate (within the limits of our testing methodology) that
Continuous Visualisation is considered much better by a cohort of beginner,
intermediate and advanced users. These results support further development of
IVTRS and Tourism Blog Visualiser systems. However, usability testing is a
continuous process, as any ill-designed interface can turn a good idea into a bad
implementation. Hence, further usability testing is necessary at various stages of
development of the IVTRS and Tourism Blog Visualiser systems.
6 Conclusions and Future Work

In this paper we have compared the ease of using Discrete and Continuous
Visualisation systems for accessing tourism information. Discrete Visualisation
required users to visit five web sites related to the Great Ocean Road. Continuous
Visualisation presented the same information combined as a video clip. The test users
included beginner, intermediate as well as advanced computer and Internet users.
While not many users considered themselves as expert computer users, many more
viewed themselves as expert Internet users. Quantitative results demonstrated that
most users find it easier to access information via a Continuous Visualisation system,
as compared to accessing information via a Discrete Visualisation system.
This research used a prototype of the proposed system to carry out alpha (in-house)
testing. In the next phase of the research, an Internet-based model of the system
should be subjects to beta testing involving general public.
References
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of The Eleventh International Conference on Information Technology in Travel &
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Salzburg, Austria.
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multimedia systems, Journal of Enterprise Information management, Volume: 19, Issue:
2, 2006, pp 223-233, Emerald, Bradford, UK.
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video browsing. In Proceedings of Eighth International Conference on Information
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Washington, DC, USA.
Jakkilinki, R. & Sharda, N. (2006). A framework for creating ontology-based e-tourism
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Tourism Industry, W. Pease, M. Rowe, M. Cooper (eds.), Idea Group Inc., Hershey,
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P.M. ; Frew, A. J. (Eds.), The Hospitality Information Technology Association, Cergy
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A Comparative Study of Continuous and Discrete

Keywords: Intelligent Visual Travel Recommender System (IVTRS), Visualisation, Discrete

Section two introduces the concepts underpinning the development of a Continuous

2 Travel Recommender Systems

Users find it difficult to visualise their complete itinerary, because information on

By adding a layer of intelligence, this system can be enhanced to become an

The IVTRS can be viewed as a system with three layers:

Fig. 1. Intelligent Visual Travel Recommender System (IVTRS) Architecture

The Presentation Layer is responsible for the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

Originally we developed the Continuous Visualisation methodology for enhancing a

3 Discrete and Continuous Visualisation

Fig. 2. Discrete Visualisation of Information

Figure 2 gives a conceptual view of Discrete Visualisation of tourism information.

Fig. 3. Continuous Visualisation of Information

Figure 3 gives a conceptual view of Continuous Visualisation of tourism information.

A Continuous Visualisation system dynamically retrieves and combines the

Usability testing involves measuring the quality of user experience in handling

5 Usability Testing, Results and Analysis

An important ethical guideline governing usability research is that the participants

5.1 Participants background

A pre-experiment questionnaire was administered to determine the competency level

Advance level Advance level

Fig. 4. Participant familiarity with using a computer

10% Intermediate level

Fig. 5. Participant familiarity with using the Internet

5.2 Usability Test of Discrete Visualisation

details of the testing procedure are presented in a Masters Thesis by Venkataiah

Table 1. Post-experiment Questions for Discrete Visualisation

5.3 Usability Test of Continuous Visualisation

Table 2. Post-experiment Questions for Continuous Visualisation

5.4 Result and Analysis

Fig. 6. Usability Results for Discrete Visualisation of Information

Fig. 7. Usability Results for Continuous Visualisation of Information

In the Discrete Visualisation system prototype:

In the Continuous Visualisation system prototype:

6 Conclusions and Future Work

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