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
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.
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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Professor
Roderic D.
M. Page
Editor,
Systematic
Biology
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