Science keywords linkages

[rwegener2]

Overview

ADMG has put a lot of work into curating metadata fields for a variety of science keywords. The result is that there are several sets of science keywords at different levels of specificity and different types of keywords are linked to different entities in the platform. We would like to make sure this metadata is leveraged to maximum benefit so this ticket exists to assess where those keywords are used and develop ideas for their effective use.

Background

There are 4 types of science concepts that ADMG uses in their inventory, which is also summarized here:

1. NASA Earth Science Focus Areas
2. Geophysical Concepts
3. GCMD Phenomena (also called Science Keywords or Measurement Keywords)
4. Focus Phenomena

Concept	Total #	Defined by
NASA Earth Science Focus Areas	8	NASA Earth Science Division
Geophysical Concepts	28	ADMG
GCMD Phenomena (also called Science Keywords or Measurement Keywords	~3000	NASA's CMR
Focus Phenomena	unconstrained (infinite number)	free text entry by ADMG

The first three are concepts are enumerated fields (there is a set number of them) and they are linked together. The Focus Phenomena are defined by ADMG without much constraint and will vary quite widely across campaigns. This ticket is primarily focused on the first three.

The first three concepts are linked together as explained in this document from ADMG. To read it you will need to request access.

Goals

Science concepts are present in the interface in several places:

1. home page (focus areas and geophysical concept boxes which link to the search page)
2. campaign page "Focus" section
3. instruments page "Instrument Details" section

We would also like to consider adding a page or a component to a page which would allow a user to visually explore and understand the different science concepts.

The goal of this ticket is to document and organize ideas which would improve the user's experience with science concepts in the interface. Initially we would like to focus on the following tasks:

• how the focus areas and geophysical concepts are listed on the campaigns page
• how the measurement keywords are listed on the instruments page
• creating a page or a section of a page where the user can explore the relationships between the different concepts

Each of these is described in more detail below.

Tasks

1) how the focus areas and geophysical concepts are listed on the campaigns page

On the campaigns page the focus areas and geophysical concepts are listed as just a comma seperated list of strings:

How can we better display this information to help the user more easily skim what type of data is collected? One component may be to show the relationship between the focus areas and the geophysical concepts because it would help the user zoom more quickly to the large concept (the focus area) and then look more specifically at the related geophysical concepts.

2) how the measurement keywords (GCMD Phenomena) are listed on the instruments page

Measurement keywords are listed on the instruments page as a comma separated list. There are two goals to improve in this section:

1. display the hierarchy of the keywords

As can be explored in this doc keywords are organized in an hierarchy by category > topic > term > variable level 1 > variable level 2 > variable level 3. Most keywords don't get specified all the way to variable level 3. That document also shows the mapping from geophysical concept to measurement keywords.

I'm not totally sure what we are currently displaying in the interface but I think we'd like to change the display to allow users to more easily skim the keywords.

2. [maybe] relate the keywords to their associated geophysical concepts (mapping in this doc , also linked in point 1)

It may or may not also be helpful to add some small component or have as a part of visual showing how the measurement keywords are related to geophysical concepts. Or maybe it isn't. 🤷‍♀️

3) creating a page or a section of a page where the user can explore the relationships between the different concepts

The final way we may want to help the user understand the science concepts is to design a page that allows them to understand the relationship between the entities. The goals of this page (or pages or part of a page) would be:

1. Define the difference between focus areas, geophysical concepts, and GCMD phenomena
2. View the relationships between each of the science concepts
3. (maybe) browse entities by concepts or groups of concepts

If we looked into number 3 we may consider how that would tie into the search view or not. This relates to the larger goal of defining how this type of visual or interactive content would fit in the user flow.

What we have so far

Prior Brainstorming
Some brainstorming of visuals that we have already done include:
Hierarchy Visuals

Network Visuals

While these were good for brainstorming it is important to remember that the entity relationships are many to many.