What I like about it has nothing to do with the actul data they displayed, or even exactly how they displayed it, per se. What I like is:
- The idea that the field of available information is greater than what you see on the window itself -- that you can zoom in and out, and pan around. It gives the impression of a literal window on a much larger world, rather than a confining box with too much information crammed into it.
- The thumbnail tiles which, when zoomed out, give the appearance of a mosaic, but when zoomed in reveal that each tile is the portal to a whole new world (unlike on the page in question, I would imagine that each tile would open up another pattern of tiles within it). If it scaled appropriately, it could really help give the impression of where any given critter fits in the larger context of biodiversity. I could imagine one level where there are dozens of tiles, with all of chordata being only one small bit off in the corner -- and a proportional number of tiles for single-cell organisms vs. multicellular, and so on. I see great potential for giving people a visual "feel" for what biodiversity means. I can also imagine a bunch of empty tiles (maybe a faint "?" mark) representing the guestimated proportion of species not-yet described, with less than 10% with content -- again to give a sense. And maybe another view that contrasts extant organisms to extinct. And so on...
- The mouse acting like a magnifying glass. I would prefer it to behave more like the taskbar on the bottom of an OS-X Mac, but the point is you can scan the big picture, and by simply moving your mouse soom in for a closer look at the bits that seem interesting to you -- with context-sensitive pop-ups in appropriate places.
There are other things I like about it as well, but in a word, I found it "engaging" -- exactly the sort of thing we need to capture the imagination of the people who select our leaders and policymakers.
Maybe it's not original, and maybe the technology isn't quite there yet. But I still like it -- both for the "kewl" factor, and more importantly the way it draws me in to the subject while allowing me to keep a sense of the broader perspective.
Rich
________________________________
From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Donald Hobern Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 9:58 PM To: Donat Agosti Cc: tdwg@lists.tdwg.org; 'Bob Morris'; 'Denise Green'; bmishler@berkeley.edu Subject: Re: [tdwg] Interesting example of tree navigation In the case of this particular tool (once I found that what I was seeing in my instance of Firefox was missing something others were seeing and tried it in Safari), the value seems very minimal to me. The actual tree being browsed is rather small and not really needing such a fancy interface. More importantly the rescaling of text only seems to affect the item you are currently inspecting rather than the children of that item. If the children too were enlarged, it could be a tool which made it easier to select the next level in a navigation. As it is, you still have to track (frequently kinked) lines to find the small-text children. Donald Donat Agosti wrote:
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 mailto: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 _______________________________________________ tdwg mailing list tdwg@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg
_______________________________________________
tdwg mailing list
tdwg@lists.tdwg.org
http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg
----------------------------------------
Professor Roderic D. M. Page
Editor, Systematic Biology
DEEB, IBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QP
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 141 330 4778
Fax: +44 141 330 2792
email: r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk
web: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
iChat: aim://rodpage1962
reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html
Subscribe to Systematic Biology through the Society of Systematic
Biologists Website: http://systematicbiology.org
Search for taxon names: http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/portal/ http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/%7Erpage/portal/
Find out what we know about a species: http://ispecies.org
Rod's rants on phyloinformatics: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Rod's rants on ants: http://semant.blogspot.com
________________________________
_______________________________________________ tdwg mailing list tdwg@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg
-- ------------------------------------------------------------ Donald Hobern (dhobern@gbif.org) Deputy Director for Informatics Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Tel: +45-35321483 Mobile: +45-28751483 Fax: +45-35321480 ------------------------------------------------------------