May be a reason why few people use these nice tools is, that you do not get a lot out of them. And this might also explain, why such highly unstructured initiatives like Wikipedia or ecoport are flourishing. They have content, and to some extent, individuals can add more to it, and thus feel to be part of the initative, and get used to know where and how they can find their stuff.

Donat

From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Roderic Page
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 8:45 AM
To: Rebecca Shapley
Cc: Bob Morris; tdwg@lists.tdwg.org; Denise Green; bmishler@berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: [tdwg] Interesting example of tree navigation

Much as I think interfaces like this are way kewl, I think it is revealing that nobody has successfully applied this sort of approach to browsing the large hierarchy that many of us interact with on a daily basis - the file system on our computer. Those efforts that have been made have not caught on (remember the flyby navigation in Jurassic Park? - http://www.slipups.com/items/2786.html ).

In the same way, there have been a slew of attempts to display search engine results in forms other than Google's list of top hits, but none have caught on -- people know how to interpret lists, but often struggle with graphical displays of information, much to the chagrin of the people who make cool interfaces.

Much as I think EoL might indeed make a splash with something like this, it will be empty unless it actually helps people find things without getting lost. In the same way, I thought the tree navigation shown in the EoL release video was perhaps the worst possible way of doing things, ignoring pretty much everything people have written about navigating in large trees.

Regards

Rod

On 14 Sep 2007, at 03:52, Rebecca Shapley wrote:

My guess -

a) there aren't many information sets that are difficult enough to present in standard ways AND benefit from this type of presentation
b) there haven't been enough of (a) with the programmers/money/willingness to try something novel
c) some concern over limiting the audience for the info, because it requires Flash or some other plug-in. Potentially a high bar in terms of browser capability, internet connection, etc. Or because Flash isn't open-source.

To get around (c), I'd take this implementation as a spec for the desired interaction behavior and see if it can be done in any other more acceptable technology, OR if it can be primarily Flash-based, but also degrade to something acceptable for older browsers.

No reason the EOL project can't make a splash with something as exciting as this.

-R.

On 9/13/07, Richard Pyle < deepreef@bishopmuseum.org> wrote:

> As Rod suggested, this is pretty old news.

This begs the question: has this style of user-interface failed to catch on
more widely because of:

1) Technological limitations;
2) Insufficient creativity and inspiration; or
3) Insufficient usability?

I'm tempted to eliminate #3 on the grounds that I don't think this style of
UI has been widespread enough to have been subjected to, and then failed,
some sort of usability meta-experiment.

This is not to say that it won't ultimately fail such a meta-experiment --
just that it hasn't really had a chance to fail it yet.

Rich

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