Monday, September 19, 2011

Reaction: A Review of Overview+Detail, Zooming, and Focus+Context Interfaces

This article focusses more on the interface (system) aspect of information visualization that improves the user interaction.

I feel that this paper exposes the different interfaces to the core illustrating examples and showing how really things work. This paper is excellent for people who want to understand the finer details and not just the abstraction or theory. The article has made compelling attempts to explain techniques through scientific theory, illustrations, giving real time examples. Above all, I enjoyed reading FOCUS+CONTEXT section because it allows to show the universe, yet focus the object currently under the lens. The DataLens fisheye calender tool is one which I found to be more interesting.

The types are evaluated based on performance, usability, cognition. The paper concludes with giving us a tradeoff between the different interface types and the situations in which they might come handy and situations where they are not.

I think that the length of the paper is justified after understanding the various interface aspects it covers.

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