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To understand the ecological impact of image production, from early analog photography to contemporary digital media, it is necessary to interpret complex relationships between materials, people, and processes over time and space. However, existing semantic data platforms often lack intuitive visual tools that can effectively support this exploration by non-technical users.
This dissertation was developed within the scope of the Bioimages project, which explores how image-making affects the environment and society. It aims to address the challenge of how to present structured and time-evolving information in a visual, accessible, and engaging way that facilitates analysis and storytelling about the sustainability of images.
The work is structured around technical, technological, and scientific goals. Technically, the focus is on creating an intuitive interface that effectively represents structured data related to image production over space and time. Technologically, it explores the integration of semantic data infrastructures, specifically Wikibase, with interactive visualization frameworks such as React, D3.js, and React-Leaflet. Scientifically, the project investigates how spatiotemporal and graphbased visualization techniques can enhance user understanding of complex semantic relationships and support exploratory analysis in the context of image ecology.
To validate the platform, an experimental protocol was conducted involving participants from the fields of art and design education. The evaluation included task-based usability testing and a System Usability Scale questionnaire. The results validated the conceptual validity of the proposed interface and demonstrated high task accuracy in direct exploration tasks. However, the study also identified areas for improving usability, specifically in the responsiveness of filters and the clarity of interactions.
These findings support the use of graph-based, spatiotemporal visualizations as effective tools to explore rich and dynamic datasets, with potential applications extending beyond image ecology into other domains involving historical, cultural, or environmental data.