Design Services

Information Display and Interaction
Craig Maxey

This page is a reference document which reflects this author's research into Information Visualization and Navigation, especially as it relates to the World Wide Web. Even though there is clear overlap in several areas I have grouped this information into the following categories:

* Classical Information Visualization - Tufte

Current Activities in Hierarchical Structure Visualizations

* Overview Papers
* Xerox and the other hyperbolic folks
* General Web Navigation Examples
* VRML and other 3D WEB Navigation Activities
* Use of semi-transparency in visualization
* Scientific Visualization


Classical works of Edward R. Tufte

We try to adhere to the guidelines offered by the excellent reference books of Edward R. Tufte, specifically:

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphic Press, (1983)

Envisioning Information, Graphic Press, (1990) "The Nouns".

Consistent with Tufte’s values placed on the aesthetic needs of the Information Customer, Envisioning Information received the "Best Graphic Design of the Year" from International Design. We are particularly sensitive to the issues of "Micro/Macro" (solutions that offer the IC both a big picture and detail viewpoint of information at the same time) , "Color and Information", and "Escaping Flatland" (exploring how to represent several dimensions of information on a 2D surface, computer screen, towards the goal of maximizing the information density per screen pixel).

and his most recent work,
Visual Explanations, Graphic Press, (1997) "The Verbs".

"Edward Tufte's new book, Visual Explanations is about pictures of verbs, the representation of mechanism and motion, process and dynamics, causes and effects, explanation and narrative". (Explores the documentation of magic as a guide for illustrating action.)


Overview Papers:


Xerox PARC et. al.:


Probably the most recognized work in heirarchical information display and interaction has been done by the folks at Xerox PARC. You can’t explore for long without appreciating the efforts of Stuart K. Card, G. Robertson, and of course J.D. Mackinlay. Apparently the definitive work represented in the "Perspective Wall", the "Perspective Tree" and the "Hyperbolic Tree" (the later of significant importance in the fact that it represents the optimal 2D visualization of the WEB’s intrinsic heirarchical information structure) has finally been "thrown over the wall" to XSOFT (Xerox commercial software products). There are other works focusing on the same subject, e.g. Fractal Approaches for Visualizing Huge Hierarchies, by Hirotaka Yoshihara, but the clear baseline has been offered by this work by Xerox. An excellent illustration of the "Information Visualizer" 3D interface was included in the September 23, 1996 issue of PC Week. Lyberworld - IR & DB Information Visualization appears to be a very related visualization technique.


General Web Navigation Development



VRML and other 3D WEB Navigation,
Visualization Projects

VRML is being used to represent both literal metaphors, (rooms, cities, and people) and abstract metaphors (glyph representing data objects). It is my judgement that the goal of maximizing the information encoding per screen pixel precludes the use of literal metaphors. Consequently my VRML references only reflect work in the area of abstract data visualization


The Use of Semi-Transparency in Information Visualization

Use of transparency to support information visualization and interaction


Scientific Visualization