Interesting example of tree navigation
This is not only a fascinating website in general, but in one spot has a quite novel - not perfect, but nicely innovative - interaction model for a tree of information. Does a decent job of both showing the overview of information available and offering more information at various levels, in context, in response to interaction. http://www.schematic.com/#/HowWeDoIt/ProjectProcess/
-R.
WOW!! Very slick!!! EoL should be all over this!
I would say the whole page is a useful model -- not just the tree part (by which I assume you meant the "Project Process" tile). The whole approach to organizing and presenting (i.e., zoom & pan) information is wonderful! It took a little "getting-used-to", but once I got the hang of it, I really liked it.
I gather that it's Flash? (I mean in the Macromedia/Adobe sense ... I already know it's "Flash" in the slang sense.)
A little sluggish -- but well worth it, I think.
Aloha, Rich
_____
From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Rebecca Shapley Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 10:25 AM To: tdwg@lists.tdwg.org; Denise Green; bmishler@berkeley.edu Subject: [tdwg] Interesting example of tree navigation
This is not only a fascinating website in general, but in one spot has a quite novel - not perfect, but nicely innovative - interaction model for a tree of information. Does a decent job of both showing the overview of information available and offering more information at various levels, in context, in response to interaction. http://www.schematic.com/#/HowWeDoIt/ProjectProcess/
-R.
Indeed, this sort of Flash/Flex-based application is on the table...but, I find this a bit like mystery meat navigation. More specifically, I have been in touch with developers of Mindomo (http://www.mindomo.com) for use in EoL's WorkBench environment using Adobe's AIR for a desktop/web hybrid. Mind maps, tied down with Semantic Web technologies like that used in MindRaider (http://mindraider.sourceforge.net/index.html) are what I'm aiming for.
Cheers,
David P. Shorthouse
------------------------------------------------------
Department of Biological Sciences
CW-403, Biological Sciences Centre
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E9
mailto:dps1@ualberta.ca
http://canadianarachnology.dyndns.org
------------------------------------------------------
From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Richard Pyle Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 2:43 PM To: 'Rebecca Shapley'; tdwg@lists.tdwg.org; 'Denise Green'; bmishler@berkeley.edu Subject: RE: [tdwg] Interesting example of tree navigation
WOW!! Very slick!!! EoL should be all over this!
I would say the whole page is a useful model -- not just the tree part (by which I assume you meant the "Project Process" tile). The whole approach to organizing and presenting (i.e., zoom & pan) information is wonderful! It took a little "getting-used-to", but once I got the hang of it, I really liked it.
I gather that it's Flash? (I mean in the Macromedia/Adobe sense ... I already know it's "Flash" in the slang sense.)
A little sluggish -- but well worth it, I think.
Aloha,
Rich
_____
From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Rebecca Shapley Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 10:25 AM To: tdwg@lists.tdwg.org; Denise Green; bmishler@berkeley.edu Subject: [tdwg] Interesting example of tree navigation
This is not only a fascinating website in general, but in one spot has a quite novel - not perfect, but nicely innovative - interaction model for a tree of information. Does a decent job of both showing the overview of information available and offering more information at various levels, in context, in response to interaction. http://www.schematic.com/#/HowWeDoIt/ProjectProcess/
-R.
This is essentially a "degree-of-interest" tree, which has been around for a while (e.g., http://www.parc.xerox.com/research/projects/sensemaking/ visualization_interaction/default.html) and the underlying concept dates back to the '80s. It looks nice, but the hierarchy shown is shallow and not too broad. That said, this would be a fun way to display a classification like ITIS. However, at some point we need to ask whether "fun" translates into usability.
Some of the coolest visualisations turn out to be difficult to use (e.g., hyperbolic trees).
Regards
Rod
On 13 Sep 2007, at 23:22, Shorthouse, David wrote:
Indeed, this sort of Flash/Flex-based application is on the table...but, I find this a bit like mystery meat navigation. More specifically, I have been in touch with developers of Mindomo (http://www.mindomo.com) for use in EoL’s WorkBench environment using Adobe’s AIR for a desktop/web hybrid. Mind maps, tied down with Semantic Web technologies like that used in MindRaider (http:// mindraider.sourceforge.net/index.html) are what I’m aiming for.
Cheers,
David P. Shorthouse
Department of Biological Sciences
CW-403, Biological Sciences Centre
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E9
mailto:dps1@ualberta.ca
http://canadianarachnology.dyndns.org
From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg- bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Richard Pyle Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 2:43 PM To: 'Rebecca Shapley'; tdwg@lists.tdwg.org; 'Denise Green'; bmishler@berkeley.edu Subject: RE: [tdwg] Interesting example of tree navigation
WOW!! Very slick!!! EoL should be all over this!
I would say the whole page is a useful model -- not just the tree part (by which I assume you meant the "Project Process" tile). The whole approach to organizing and presenting (i.e., zoom & pan) information is wonderful! It took a little "getting-used-to", but once I got the hang of it, I really liked it.
I gather that it's Flash? (I mean in the Macromedia/Adobe sense ... I already know it's "Flash" in the slang sense.)
A little sluggish -- but well worth it, I think.
Aloha,
Rich
From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg- bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Rebecca Shapley Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 10:25 AM To: tdwg@lists.tdwg.org; Denise Green; bmishler@berkeley.edu Subject: [tdwg] Interesting example of tree navigation
This is not only a fascinating website in general, but in one spot has a quite novel - not perfect, but nicely innovative - interaction model for a tree of information. Does a decent job of both showing the overview of information available and offering more information at various levels, in context, in response to interaction. http://www.schematic.com/#/HowWeDoIt/ProjectProcess/
-R.
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/ 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
Speak of the...umm...devil... :-)
This is essentially a "degree-of-interest" tree, which has been around for a while (e.g.,
http://www.parc.xerox.com/research/projects/sensemaking/visualization_intera ction/default.html)
and the underlying concept dates back to the '80s.
What was that tool you had implemented for visualizing trees, which I referenced in my previous email?
It looks nice, but the hierarchy shown is shallow and not too broad. That said, this would be a fun way to display a classification like ITIS. However, at some point we need to ask whether "fun" translates into usability.
This is a good point. Usability needs to trump sex appeal. But "fun" can do something that usability oftentimes can't: engage people who might otherwise not be engaged.
All new approaches to interface haves hampered usability in the beginning. The question is, is it simply a matter of getting used to a new interface, or does the interface just plain suck even after you get to know how to use it? You can't always tell from first impressions.
Some of the coolest visualisations turn out to be difficult to use ( e.g., hyperbolic trees).
That's it! Hyperbolic trees. I, for one, found it very useful.
Rich
Open source is definitely the way to go with EoL, of course. But I was thinking more in terms of the presentation style. Not for scientists, necessarily, but for "regular folk" who want to be able to navigate the deep/righ world of biodiversity informatics in an intuitive way. If the schematic.com approach is scalable (by several orders of magnitude -- both in breadth and depth), then I think it has great potential. I'm thinking of tumbnail images of (say) species on each of the tiles, which when zoomed out far enough meld together into representative thumbnails of families...and so on. The maginified highlight for trees are also very functional and intuitive.
Rod page had another dynamic interface a couple years ago, but I forget the name.
Rich
_____
From: Shorthouse, David [mailto:dps1@ualberta.ca] Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 12:22 PM To: 'Richard Pyle'; 'Rebecca Shapley'; tdwg@lists.tdwg.org; 'Denise Green'; bmishler@berkeley.edu Subject: RE: [tdwg] Interesting example of tree navigation
Indeed, this sort of Flash/Flex-based application is on the table...but, I find this a bit like mystery meat navigation. More specifically, I have been in touch with developers of Mindomo (http://www.mindomo.com) for use in EoL's WorkBench environment using Adobe's AIR for a desktop/web hybrid. Mind maps, tied down with Semantic Web technologies like that used in MindRaider (http://mindraider.sourceforge.net/index.html) are what I'm aiming for.
Cheers,
David P. Shorthouse
------------------------------------------------------
Department of Biological Sciences
CW-403, Biological Sciences Centre
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E9
mailto:dps1@ualberta.ca
http://canadianarachnology.dyndns.org
------------------------------------------------------
From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Richard Pyle Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 2:43 PM To: 'Rebecca Shapley'; tdwg@lists.tdwg.org; 'Denise Green'; bmishler@berkeley.edu Subject: RE: [tdwg] Interesting example of tree navigation
WOW!! Very slick!!! EoL should be all over this!
I would say the whole page is a useful model -- not just the tree part (by which I assume you meant the "Project Process" tile). The whole approach to organizing and presenting (i.e., zoom & pan) information is wonderful! It took a little "getting-used-to", but once I got the hang of it, I really liked it.
I gather that it's Flash? (I mean in the Macromedia/Adobe sense ... I already know it's "Flash" in the slang sense.)
A little sluggish -- but well worth it, I think.
Aloha,
Rich
_____
From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Rebecca Shapley Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 10:25 AM To: tdwg@lists.tdwg.org; Denise Green; bmishler@berkeley.edu Subject: [tdwg] Interesting example of tree navigation
This is not only a fascinating website in general, but in one spot has a quite novel - not perfect, but nicely innovative - interaction model for a tree of information. Does a decent job of both showing the overview of information available and offering more information at various levels, in context, in response to interaction. http://www.schematic.com/#/HowWeDoIt/ProjectProcess/
-R.
participants (4)
-
Rebecca Shapley -
Richard Pyle -
Roderic Page -
Shorthouse, David