Redgraph: Navigating Semantic Web Networks using Virtual Reality

We present Redgraph, a generic virtual reality (VR) visualization program for network data, based on resource description framework (RDF), the primary standard of data underlying the semantic Web. Redgraph bypasses a number of problems in 3D graph visualization by relying on users to interactively "extrude" a 2D network into the third dimension. This pilot study applies Redgraph to data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to explore innovations in the history of computer science. Comparison of subjects\´ response times utilizing 3D pull-out vs. 2D strategies on tasks involving fine grained connectivity or broad network observation found that subjects were faster correctly answering questions involving fine-grained connectivity using 3D strategies, particularly when data was densely clustered. Subjects\´ qualitative feedback suggests that the most valuable application of this 3D technique lies in untimed exploration to discover relationships in the underlying data structure.