Yes, it's a degree of interest interaction. There have been various attempts to implement this DOI idea since it came out, and I'm pointing to this one as a rather novel implementation, that may overcome some of the usability issues seen with hyperbolic trees, etc. I would definitely test its usability with a taxonomic tree data set and some "normal folk" before advocating it as the ultimate solution for an EOL project. Denise Green and I did these types of usability tests on three interactive tree presentations available in 2005, providing something of a baseline against which this particular interaction style might be judged. See: http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/TOL/docs/GreenShapleyTOLFinalReport.pdf (4 MB) -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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