Information Visualization for Learning words in the Qur’an

Abstract

Qur’an is a source of guidance to Muslims around the world. Although the language of the Qur’an is Arabic, many Muslims with different native languages attempt to learn the language to understand the message of the Qur’an. Qur’an contains many repeated words. Even though there are approximately 77 430 words in the Qur’an, there are only 5155 words used repeatedly or at least once to make up those words. This means that in theory for non-native Arabic speakers, these words can be added to their vocabulary to understand the literal meaning of the message of the Qur’an. In this paper, an interface was developed incorporating parallel and scatter plot visualization to visualize word information in the Qur’an. Users are able to know the Arabic words, the meaning of each word, the word count, word position and their personal vocabulary count to support their learning activity. Interviewed participants found the software useful for learning Arabic words. Although analysis of the two plots show that parallel plot scores better in terms of efficiency of interaction, interviewed participants give lower rating for graphical perceptibility to the plot. The scatter plot visualization is then developed to replace the parallel plot.