Improving the PDS-PPI User Experience

Members on the Planetary Plasma Interactions (PPI) Node of Planetary Data System (PDS) have been working to improve the overall user experience while using the PPI website and tools. We are developing improvements in several areas including ease of locating data, interactive data visualization options, and providing connections to data analysis tools.

Many users begin their data search using Google and the results are somewhat disappointing since many data sets that are available from PDS are missed. We will discuss the new PPI search tool that makes use of the PDS4 metadata to improve the probability of finding the data. We also will present an updated version of the Splash tool for time-series data analysis. This tool is available through the PPI website. SPLASH has been updated to read PDS4 labeled table data in addition to PDS3 tables. Finally, PPI is now using the Autoplot capability to produce "PNG walks", an enhanced browsing tool. We are incorporating the "walks" into the website data access. We will show how users can now quickly browse through pre-defined PNG images of the files of selected datasets, and then jump into the Autoplot tool with the data preloaded with the settings used to produce that image. These users can then use the full set of Autoplot features to customize the plot for their needs.