Abstract
Increasingly, we are entangled during our daily working lives in a web of distributed, networked information sources offering varied means of electronic communication. We have become information explorers in this complex, electronic world-at-large. In addressing the problems of navigation and orientation that these developments raise, a user interaction model is developed which also deals with some of the issues of workspace management addressed by systems such as Rooms and the Information Visualizer. In this model, the world-at-large is represented as Information Islands, each of which contains Buildings which themselves house items of information. The user explores this world in a Vehicle which has two views of the world; the public, comprehensive view, and a private, customised view. The Vehicle can also be seen as the user's own private workspace. Wherever the user wanders in cyberspace, he is always at home.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Card, S K, Robertson, G G and Mackinlay, J D (1991) The Information Visualizer, an Information Workspace. In Proceedings of CHI'91 Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (New Orleans, April 1991), 181–188. New York: ACM.
Dieberger, A (1993) The Information City — a step towards merging of hypertext and virtual reality. Poster at Hypertext '93.
Dieberger, A (1994) Report of the Workshop on Spatial Metaphors at ECHT'94 — the European Conference on Hypermedia Technology, September 1994, Edinburgh, UK. Accessible through the World Wide Web only: (http://www.gatech.edu/lcc/idt/Faculty/andreas_dieberger/Workshop.ECHT94.html).
Dieberger, A and Tromp, J G (1993) The Information City Project — a virtual reality user interface for navigation in information spaces. In Proceedings of the Symposium Virtual Reality Vienna, December 1–3, 1993.
Fairchild, K M, Poltrock, S E and Furnas, G W (1988) SemNet: Three-Dimensional Graphics Representations of Large Knowledge Bases. In Cognitive Science and its Applications for Human-Computer Interaction, R. Guindon (ed). Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Fischer, G and Stevens, C (1991) Information Access in Complex, Poorly Structured Information Spaces. Proceedings of ACM CHI'91 Conference, 63–70, New York: ACM.
Hardman, L, Bulterman, D C A and van Rossum, G (1994) The Amsterdam Hypermedia Model: Adding Time and Context to the Dexter Model. Communications of the ACM, 37 (2), 50–63.
Henderson, D A and Card, S K (1986) Rooms: The Use of Multiple Virtual Workspaces to Reduce Space Contention in a Window-Based Graphical User Interface. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 5 (3), 211–243.
Musil, S and Pigel G (1993) Virgets: Elements for Building 3-D User Interfaces. In Proceedings of the Symposium Virtual Reality Vienna, December 1–3, 1993. Also available as TR 93/13, Vienna User Interface Group, Lenaugasse 2/8, A-1080 Vienna.
Nagel, T (1986) The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rifas, L (1994) The Dataforest: tree forms as information display graphics. In Dieberger, 1994.
Robertson, G G, MacKinlay, J D and Card, S K (1991) Cone Trees: Animated 3D Visualizations of Hierarchical Information, Proceedings of CHI'91 (New Orleans, Louisiana, 28 April–2 May, 1991), ACM, New York, pp. 189–194.
Robertson, G G, Card, S G and Mackinlay, J D (1993) Information visualization using 3D interactive animation. Communications of the ACM, 36(4):56–71, April 1993.
Smith, P A and Wilson, J R (1993) Navigation in hypertext through virtual environments. Applied Ergonomics, 24 (4), 1993, 271–278.
Waterworth, J A (1992) Multimedia Interaction: Human Factors Aspects. Chichester, UK: Ellis Horwood, 1992.
Waterworth, J A (1995) Viewing Others and Others' Views: Presence and Concealment in Shared Hyperspace. Workshop on Social Contexts of Hypermedia, 16–17 February 1995, Umeå University, Sweden.
Waterworth, J A and Chignell, M H (1989) A Manifesto for Hypermedia Usability Research. Hypermedia, 1 (3), 1989, 205–234.
Waterworth, J A and Chignell, M H (1991) A Model of Information Exploration. Hypermedia, 3, 1991, 35–58.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Waterworth, J.A. (1996). A pattern of Islands: Exploring public information space in a private vehicle. In: Brusilovsky, P., Kommers, P., Streitz, N. (eds) Multimedia, Hypermedia, and Virtual Reality Models, Systems, and Applications. MHVR 1996. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1077. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61282-3_27
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61282-3_27
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-61282-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68432-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive