AcademyScope Interactive Touch-Screen Visualization Now On Display at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.

During the second half of 2012 and into this year, CNS was lucky enough to be part of an extremely productive collaboration with the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, that resulted in a state-of-the-art, interactive touch-screen visualization called AcademyScope.

Using a 55-inch, multi-touch screen, viewers can explore all reports published by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council—from twenty years ago to today.

The Automatic Mode of the visualization shows the 100 most frequently downloaded reports of the previous seven days as well as newly released reports. Displayed downloads, including download totals, are current within the minute.

The Interactive Mode supports browsing and exploration by topic, subtopic, and individual report. Users can select a topic on the right to reveal all of its subtopics, and touch one of the subtopics to display all reports in that area and their relatedness to each other. (Links between reports are automatically generated based on the incidence of shared key terms and phrases.) Touching any report brings up detailed information on the right side of the display. There's also a QR code that allows users to download a PDF of the report to their smart device.

Acknowledgements: Katy Börner (initial concept, design & interactivity consultation), Chin Hua Kong (lead software developer), Samuel Mills (graphic design), Adam Simpson (programming), Bhumi Patel (programming), Rohit Alekar (programming).

Click here to watch a video detailing the design and programming of AcademyScope.