Title:
PolyZoom: Multiscale and Multifocus Exploration in 2D Visual Spaces
Reference Information:
CHI 2012, May5-10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA
Author Bios:
Waqas Javed and Sohaib Ghani have both been PhD students in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University since 2008. They both work in the PIVOT Lab under the direction of Niklas Elmqvist doing research in information visualization and visual analytics.
Niklas Elmqvist currently serves as an assistant professor in Purdue University's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he advises and aides graduate students in pursue of their PhD's. Some areas of research he has most notably been involved with are human-computer interaction, information visualization and visual analytics.
Summary -
This paper presents studies Javed and Ghani performed to determine if their 'novel' approach to 2D Visual Space representation (called PolyZoom) made human users more efficient in exploration of that Visual Space. Although they improved on spatial awareness, this layout method causes reduced viewing size for each region as well as underutilized areas of the viewing screen but showed to be more effective for visual space exploration (which is similar but not the same as navigation).
"PolyZoom was designed to proved spatial awareness simultaneously at multiple different levels of scale."
Related Work -
- A Comparison of Navigation Techniques Across Different Types of Off-Screen Navigation Task - http://www.springerlink.com/content/yv00750u37023831/
- Workspace Awareness in Real-Time Distributed Groupware - http://hci.usask.ca/publications/1997/gutwin-phd.pdf
- Using Distortion-Oriented Displays to Support Workspace Awareness - http://hci.usask.ca/publications/1996/distortion-final.pdf
- An Experimental Investigation of Magnification Lens Offset and Its Impact on Imagery Analysis - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1382916&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D1382916
- Design and Evaluation of Navigation Techniques for Multiscale Virtual Environments - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1667642&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D1667642
- Guidelines for Using Multiple Views in Information Visualization - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=345271
- Browsing Zoomable Treemaps: Structure-Aware Multi-Scale Navigation Techniques - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4376147&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D4376147
- View Size and Pointing Difficulty in Multi-scale Navigation - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=989881
- ZoneZoom: Map Navigation for Smartphones with Recursive View Segmentation - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=989901
- Hyper Mochi Sheet: a predictive focusing interface for navigating and editing nested networks through a multi-focus distortion-oriented view - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=302979.303145
All the previous research I found, included referenced work by the authors, indicates that they took inspiration from multiple different sources to piece together a completely unique information representation of Visual Spaces. Previous attempts to attain spacial awareness after increasing the zoom either utilized one birds-eye-view overhead map, with the view in question blown up from the overhead map with graphics to show where the view was from, or distorted the view as to provide extra information such as the use of a fish-eye lens or magnifying glass.
Evaluation -
They performed two studies which tested volunteers on how quick they could zoom into a particular spot on the map by following a visual que, and how fast they could determine which of 4 selected areas matched the current view. This new method of information visualization for Visual Spaces like Google Maps showed through their research to produce a 6.5% speed increase in correctly zooming into a particular part of the map. Most of this speedup came from the fact that it is really easy to backtrack from or fix a slightly off view since all other views stay onscreen. The second study showed an 11% increase in the it took for users to find two regions that matched out of a predetermined selection. Both of these studies compared this new display format to a simply view that allowed panning and zooming.
Discussion -
This research project led to the creation of a new way to display different focus levels of a 2D map (arranged by tree hierarchy) and to effectively utilize the viewers screen by scaling up certain focus levels the user felt were of more importance to them.
One of the most impressive features in my opinion was that they kept the aspect ratios all the same to prevent distortion. Also it is a novel idea to store Visual Space representations such as map views in a tree format to switch between zoom levels rather quick and precisely.
In addition, I really enjoyed this article because it was written so clear and concise. It takes the reader from prior research and current exploration methods of visual spaces, the benefits and negatives associated with those methods, how their new proposed layout algorithms help maintain certain design specifications, and the evaluation of this new layout.
