Monday, September 19, 2011

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

This paper reviews the four different approaches namely overview+detail, Zooming and panning, focusing and context and cue-techniques; towards designing interfaces for the users to use in any information visualization applications. The author puts forth the mechanisms in which the approaches put forth the items in the information space. The paper further discusses the advantageous properties and the pitfalls of the four approaches.

I like the way the author has discussed each approach's basics and how it carries out the interaction with the user. Further more, the author provides examples of applications in which the approach has been used and mentions how it is beneficial and how sometimes the interaction confuses the user. I particularly liked the Google Maps Zoom functionality example in which users do not know how to zoom out by double right-clicking. I could relate this to myself!

Overall, it is a good but a very lengthy paper. The information value is really good and interesting.  The paper puts forth subtle pitfalls of the four approaches and also mentions how they can be overcome it.

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