Innovations in Visualization

InfoVis 683: Discussion of Week 6 Readings (Oct 17, 2011)

Readings Assigned: Panning and Zooming

  1. Toolglass and magic lenses: the see-through interface Eric A. Bier, Maureen C. Stone, Ken Pier, William Buxton, and Tony D. DeRose, Proc. SIGGRAPH'93, pp. 73-76.
  2. Pad. An Alternative Approach to the Computer Interface. Ken Perlin. David Fox. http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/pad-siggraph.pdf
  3. Space-Scale Diagrams: Understanding Multiscale Interfaces George Furnas and Ben Bederson, Proc SIGCHI '95.

Notes from: Space-Scale Diagram: Understanding Multiscale Interfaces by George Furnas and Ben Bederson

By: Amira Abdrabo

Main point of paper from author point of view:

To introduce "space-scale diagrams" as a technique for understanding multi-scale interfaces by making scale an explicit dimension of the representation, so that its place in the interface and interactions can be visualized, and better analyzed. The author first presented the main idea and basic properties of the technique then tried to prove its usefulness in trying to understand multi-scale interfaces like "joint pan and zoom problem", "semantic zooming" and "wraps and Fisheyes views".

Main point of paper from our point of view:

Useful paper for the researchers. The author could stick to the main point of the paper and could provide several comprehensive examples to explain the main idea of space-scale diagrams and their validity in understanding multi-scale interfaces.

How to make use of that in course work and project:

Understanding this zooming problem through the proposed technique in this paper could help in designing the interface and writing the appropriate or convenient code for that.