N.S. Drew, Sch. of Comput. Sci., Birmingham Univ., UK
A.M. Wood, Sch. of Comput. Sci., Birmingham Univ., UK
R. Beale, Sch. of Comput. Sci., Birmingham Univ., UK
It is becoming increasingly important that support is provided for users who are dealing with complex information spaces. The need is driven by the growing number of domains where there is a requirement for users to understand, navigate and manipulate large sets of computer based data; by the increasing size and complexity of this information and by the pressures to use this information efficiently. The paradigmatic example is the World Wide Web, but other domains include software systems, information systems and concurrent engineering. One approach to providing this support is to provide sophisticated visualisation tools which lead the users to form an intuitive understanding of the structure and behaviour of their domain and which provide mechanisms which allow them to manipulate objects within their system. The paper describes such a tool and a number of visualisation techniques that it implements.
Index Terms:
data visualisation; self-adjusting systems; adaptive systems; virtual reality; programming environments; visual programming; information networks; concurrent engineering; information systems; information retrieval; information visualisation; Narcissus; complex information spaces; user support; large computer based data sets; data manipulation; navigation; World Wide Web; software systems; information systems; concurrent engineering; visualisation tools; intuitive understanding; object manipulation
Citation:
R.J. Hendley, N.S. Drew, A.M. Wood, R. Beale, "Case study: Narcissus: visualising information," infovis, pp.90, 1995 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis '95), 1995