Events Remembering Support Via
Character Relationships’ Visualizationof Novels
Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering
Ritsumeikan University
Kosuke Fujishima, Junjie Shan, Yoko Nishihara
1Our proposed interface
l The relationships between characters are visualized by each episode and arepresented in chronological order of number of episodes.
l The visualized relationships and their changes support for readers in remember
the events in the “already-read” parts.

The novel postingsite “Become anovelist”(syosetu.com)
The Elegant Lifeof Royal Clerk Rit2

Research background
1. When people read a long novel, they usually find it

difficult to finish it at once.
2. Therefore, people have to repeat the "read-and-pause"step before finishing a story.
3. This would cause a lot of confusion in the reader’smemory.
4. If they continue reading without remembering

what they have already read, it becomesdifficult for them to understand the events ofthe story.

3

Purpose of researchl Readers may forget the characters and theevents they were involved in.
l If this problem is solved, readers will be able to“read-and-pause” smoothly.
The authors propose an interface that supports to remember
the events of an online novel by visualizing therelationships between the characters.
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Flow of the proposed interface (1)Input: Story text
1. Extraction of characters’ relationship
2. Visualization of characters’ relationships
3. Arrangement of characters’ relationships on the display
Output: Characters’ relationships in each episode5

Flow of the proposed interface(2)1. Characters’ relationships areextracted from the novel text.

Title:The Elegant Life of Royal Clerk Rit
Ignoring the cold stares from Jin and Touri, Riturged her to continue.
"The second prince is Tagi's fiance..."Yuri took over from Targa.
"Her name is Philberd Valona.""I see. Is that lady's behavior really that
ourtrageous?"
The two knights nodded.
Targa said that she once poured a glass of waterover a maid in the castle she didn't like.
Yuri said that she used the fact that she was hisfiance to blackmail the second prince forexpensive jewelry.
"Her latest target is Miss Sumika of the Scottfamily."Targa sighed, and Rit tilted her head.

From the dialogue, we can see that
Valona has a negative relationship6with Sumika.

Flow of the proposed interface (3)2. A characters’ relationships
visualization is created for each
episode from the extracted
characters’ relationships.

7

Flow of the proposed interface (4)3. The created character
relationships visualizations arearranged and presented inchronological order by episodenumber.
Horizontal scrolling8Extraction of characters’ relationships (1)l The authors extract four types of characters from novel texts foreach story.

(A) Characters who are actually acting in the episode(B) Characters who are mentioned in the conversations(C) Characters who acted in the past episode(D) Characters who were only mentioned in past conversations9Extraction of characters’ relationships(2)l The authors extract the following three types of relationships

between characters from novel texts.

Positive relationship: allies, friendships, etc.
Negative relationship: hostile relationship, dislike of the otherperson, etc.
Neutral relationship: Cases where the above does not apply.10

Extraction of characters’ relationships(3)Arrangement of characters：l The main character’s cell is placed in the center.
l The interface links the cells by edges so thatthey do not overlap the cells.
l Characters other than the main character are
assigned to cells by order of their entrance.
Highlighting new and changed characters’ relationships：l Adding a new label will highlight it compared to other characters’ relationships.
l The users can see new characters’ relationships from the label.

11Output of the proposed interface
Cell andEdgeDescription

The title of thenovelHorizontalscrollingNumber of
Episode12

Evaluation experiments (1)The experimenter verified the effectiveness of the proposed interface to support
remembering events of novel.
Experimental procedures：experimental groupcontrol group

Participants read three works in one day
After 3 days

After 3 days

The experimental group answer
using the proposed interface.

The control group answer by
relying on their memories without
using anything.

The participants：
A total of 28 participants were asked to participate in the experiment, 14 were in theexperimental group and 14 were in the control group.
13Evaluation experiments(2)Used novel texts：
l The experiment used two novels from each of the three genres offantasy, romance, and mystery.
l They are posted on “Become a novelist”, a novel posting site.
GenreTitle

Fantasy

Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World

13,454

1~5Fantasy

The Eminence in Shadow

12,037

1~5Romance The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From
Villainess to Savior

11,216

1~5

Romance The Fiancée Chosen by the Ring

15,555

1~5Mystery

The Apothecary Diaries

21,151

1~5Mystery

The Elegant Life of Royal Clerk Rit

18,260

1~5Table：Genre and title of the novels used in the experimentCharacter count Episode14

Evaluation experiments(3)Used prepared quizzes:l The experimenter created 72 quizzes.
l There were three types of quizzes used in the experiment,
including the “flow of the episode”, “characters’relationhips”, and “conversations between characters”.
Evaluation method：l The experimenter tested whether there was a difference inthe mean of the two sample tests for experimental groupand control group.
l The experimenter calculated the score of the answer dataof the participants who took the quizzes.
l They were calculated using the point addition method.
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Quiz example
Quiz typequizflow of theepisodeWhy was the girl in a hurry as she crossed the alley?

charactersʼ
relationhips
conversations
betweencharacters

What did the girl do after Subaru collapsed?
What were the goals of the three men he met in thealley?
How did the girl who crossed the alley where Subaru
was behave towards him?
How did Subaru react when he saw the magic?
What does the scenery of the other world look like from
Subaru's perspective?
16Experimental results: correct answer rate
Answer rate

Experimental group
68%

Control group
43%
25% ↑

l Table shows the correct answer rates for Experimental and Control

group.
l The correct answer rate was 0.68(Experimental group) and0.43(Control group).
l The authors think that participants were able to remember events
more easily by viewing the characters’ relationships and their changes
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visualized in the proposed interface about this result.

Experimental results：quiz typeflow of the episode charactersʼ relationships conversations between characters
Experimental groupControl group

26％↑

75%
49%

30％↑

66%
36%

63%

18％↑

45%

When comparing the difference in the average correct
answer rates for each of the three types of questions, it
was found that the order of easiest remember wascharacters’ relationships, flow of the episode,conversations between characters.
18Experimental results：genre type
Fantasy
Experimental group
Control group25％↑

Romance
65%
40%

17％↑

Mystery
70%
53%

70%

34％↑

36%

When comparing the difference in the average correct
answer rates for each of the three types of genres, it was
found that the order of easiest remember was mystery,fantasy, romance.
19Conclusionl This study proposed an interface that visualizes characters’

relationships to support remembering events in the novel.
l The experimenter tested whether there was a difference in themean of the two sample tests for experimental group and controlgroup.
l The correct answer rate was 0.68(Experimental group) and0.43(Control group).
l Experimental results showed that the proposed interface could
support the participants in remembering the events of the novel.
20Thank you very much21