Heurist is simultaneously a data management system as well as a content management system for Humanities researchers. It allows researchers to upload, edit, store and manipulate their research data. Additionally, Heurist enables researchers to publish their work directly to the internet using their internal CMS. Heurist was represented by Dr Peter Mauch of Western Sydney University and Dr Ian Johnson, the lead designer of Heurist.
PS – 2206 was entrusted to improve the network visualisation feature of Heurist which was very rudimentary and was integrated with a database structure visualiser. The team has successfully implemented the following functions:
• Presenting the network graph in full screen
• Refreshing the network graph to reflect changes in the dataset
• Ensuring smooth zoom in and out of the SVG canvas
• Setting the colour of data nodes based on data attribute
• Ensuring labels maintain a constant, readable size regardless of zoom level
• Displaying node-specific information by clicking on a node
• Increasing the graph speed and performance for datasets with more than 100 nodes
• Redesigning the toolbar to make it more concise and user-friendly
• Separating the database visualisation from the network visualisation