Fisheye Views Research Articles

Customizing a Fisheye View Algorithm to Preserve the Mental Map

Frequently, large knowledge bases are represented by graphs. Many visualization tools allow users or other applications to interact with and adjust the layouts of these graphs. One layout adjustment problem is that of showing more detail without eliding parts of the graph. Approaches based on a fisheye lens paradigm seem well suited to this task. However, many of these techniques are non-trivial to implement and their distortion techniques often cannot be altered to suit different graph layouts. When distorting a graph layout, it is often desirable to preserve various properties of the original graph in an adjusted view. Pertinent properties may include straightness of lines, graph topology, orthogonalities and proximities. However, it is normally not possible to preserve all of the original properties of the graph layout. The type of layout and its application should be considered when deciding which properties to preserve or distort. This paper describes a fisheye view algorithm which can be customized to suit various different graph layouts. In contrast to other methods, the user can select which properties of the original graph layout to preserve in an adjusted view. The technique is demonstrated through its application to visualizing structures in large software systems.

Applications of digital image warping in surveillance and navigation

Variable scale displays which combine a highly detailed representation of regions of interest with a less detailed representation of their context can be effective visualisation aids. This paper presents a concise review of the principles of conformal digital image warpings that can be used to construct variable scale displays like global fisheye views or multifocal image representations (a `looking glass' effect). It is argued that a backward warping transform is most suitable for this purpose. Pilot studies indicate that these variable scale displays may serve to optimize observer performance in surveillance and navigation tasks.

Composite Nodes, Contextual Links and Graphical Structural Views on the WWW

Recently, several open hypermedia systems (OHS) have proposed solutions for integrating with the World-Wide Web (WWW). The goal is to overcome WWW limitations using more powerful and sophisticated hypermedia data models while exploring the Web large distribution and standards, that permit interoperability and easy-of-use. This paper describes the integration of the HyperProp OHS with the WWW in a platform independent solution based on the Netscape browser. The integration allows: separation of links and presentation information from data content; definition of compositions (in order to structure documents, besides allowing the definition of contextual links and reuse of hypermedia structures); visualization of document structure; user navigation through graphical views; and navigation through guided tours and history trails. Particularly, the graphical views use filtering mechanisms based on extended fisheye view techniques, that avoid user disorientation when navigating through large documents. The integrated system also offers a web-site analysis tool. Based on the file system structure of web servers, the tool automatically generates compositions of HTML documents that, through the use of graphical views, help user navigation and information search on web-sites.

Climate Processes and Change

The 1997 Kyoto summit on climate change demonstrates the world community's desire to protect future generations from harmful effects induced by the anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases. On the other hand, the worldwide impacts of the 1997–1998 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event serve as a reminder of how natural variability can strongly influence weather. In this book, Bryant provides a bird's‐eye view of natural climate change over the last 2 million years, rather than the fish's‐eye view of the more recent possible anthropogenic global warming.The key feature that sets this text apart is the perspective of climate change on a larger timescale. The author recognizes that climate is not constant, and that only small perturbations are necessary to shift climate into an extreme state. If this is the case, however, anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing may also produce extreme climate change. Climate Processes and Change also differs from other texts by raising the awareness of uncertainties in historical observations, trends, and the complex and nonlinear relationships between observations and theory.

Navigating hierarchically clustered networks through fisheye and full-zoom methods

Many information structures are represented as two-dimensional networks (connected graphs) of links and nodes. Because these network tend to be large and quite complex, people often perfer to view part or all of the network at varying levels of detail. Hierarchical clustering provides a framework for viewing the network at different levels of detail by superimposing a hierarchy on it. Nodes are grouped into clusters, and clusters are themselves place into other clusters. Users can then navigate these clusters until an appropiate level of detail is reached. This article describes an experiment comparing two methods for viewing hierarchically clustered networks. Traditional full-zoom techniques provide details of only the current level of the hierarchy. In contrast, fisheye views, generated by the “variable-zoom” algorithm described in this article, provide information about higher levels as well. Subjects using both viewing methods were given problem-solving tasks requiring them to navigate a network, in this case, a simulated telephone system, and to reroute links in it. Results suggest that the greater context provided by fisheye views significantly improved user performance. Users were quicker to complete their task and made fewer unnecessary navigational steps through the hierarchy. This validation of fisheye views in important for designers of interfaces to complicated monitoring systems, such as control rooms for supervisory control and data acquistion systems, where efficient human performance is often critical. However, control room operators remained concerned about the size and visibility tradeoffs between the fine room operators remained concerned about the size and visibility tradeoffs between the fine detail provided by full-zoom techniques and the global context supplied by fisheye views. Specific interface feaures are required to reconcile the differences.

Fisheye Views — Making Complex Systems Manageable through Selective Presentation of Information

Fisheye Views — Making Complex Systems Manageable through Selective Presentation of Information

95/04304 Fisheye views — making complex systems manageable through selective presentation of information

95/04304 Fisheye views — making complex systems manageable through selective presentation of information

Photi—a fisheye view of bubbles

Fisheye views have recently been employed in a number of application domains to enhance user benefits from graphically presented information. These techniques employ transformations which emphasize regions of interest while suppressing, but retaining, global detail. Applications to date have concentrated on the production of aesthetically pleasing views of essentially static objects such as digraphs. In this paper the extension of the concepts to interactive applications will be investigated. The implementation of Photi, a diagramming tool for Smith's database schema design technique, is used as an example.

Graphical fisheye views

A fisheye camera lens is a very wide angle lens that magnifies nearby objects while shrinking distant objects. It is a valuable tool for seeing both local detail and context simultaneously. This paper describes a system for viewing and browsing graphs using a software analog of a fisheye lens. We first show how to implement such a view using solely geometric transformations. We then describe a more general transformation that allows global information about the graph to affect the view. Our general transformation is a fundamental extension to previous research in fisheye views.

An extended fisheye view browser for collaborative writing

This study investigated information-seeking tasks and associated cognitive issues in the context of interacting with an evolving collaborative hypertext. Fisheye view browsers were used to facilitate exploring in a large information space. The fisheye view browser was extended to incorporate word frequencies. The effects of the fisheye view browser and the changing document were tested with a 2 × 2 factorial experiment. Multivariate tests found a significant interaction between the two factors and a significant main effect of the fisheye view browser. The users who had access to the word frequency information performed their tasks more effectively than the users without access to word frequencies. This work implies that several aspects of an evolving hypertext might also be usefully incorporated in an associated fisheye view browser.

Retrieval hierarchies in hypertext

We have developed a collaborative, reuse hypertext system that has novel browsing and retrieval characteristics. The system, called Many Using and Creating Hypertext (MUCH), has been implemented on a network of UNIX workstations and used extensively in our group. This paper presents the model underlying the use of the MUCH system with respect to organizing, retrieving, and reorganizing information. In order to reuse information successfully, one must first organize it, then retrieve it, and finally reorganize it. The storage layer of hypermedia is logically based on nodes and links, and the MUCH system assumes that the names for these nodes and links represent a kind of semantic net. Documents, thesauri, and discussions may all be connected in this semantic net. The various functionalities of the system then exploit the knowledge in this semantic net. Traversals of the net with various filters are the basis for the views that users get of the semantic net. The standard perspective is of a fold-unfold outline that represents a fisheye view of the semantic net. The reorganization of information also depends on a selection of nodes and their presentation within a connected subnet.

Navigation, browsing, and understanding in an anatomical “hypermedia” environment

A variety of theories of how spatial information is represented in cognitive models have been proposed and numerous strategies (e.g., fish-eye views and nested boxes) have been devised to assist users in browsing and navigation within hypertext and “hypermedia” information systems. These methods of spatial information representation, as well as hypermedia browsing and navigation strategies, are discussed in relation to human anatomy, and a model graphics-based browsing tool, which makes use of the classical regional (spatial) and systematic (functional) arrangement of the human body, is illustrated. This browsing scheme is described in relation to human anatomy, but could be used with other complex spatially organized systems (e.g., in engineering). The integration of this graphics-based browsing tool with other established textually-based strategies is discussed.

Design of a browsing interface for information retrieval

In conventional Boolean retrieval systems, users have difficulty controlling the amount of output obtained from a given query. This paper describes the design of a user interface which permits gradual enlargement or refinement of the user's query by browsing through a graph of term and document subsets. This graph is obtained from a lattice automatically generated from the usual document-term relation. The major design features of the proposed interface are the integration of menu, fill-in the blank and direct manipulation modes of interaction within the “fisheye view” [Furnas, 1986] paradigm. A prototype user interface incorporating some of these ideas has been implemented on a microcomputer. The resulting interface is well adapted to various kinds of users and needs. More experienced users with a particular subject in mind can directly specify a query which results into a jump to a particular vertex in the graph. From there, the user can refine his initial query by browsing through the graph from that point on. On the other hand, casual users without any prior knowledge of the contents of the system or users without any particular subject in mind can freely navigate through the graph without ever specifying any query.

Generalized fisheye views

In many contexts, humans often represent their own “neighborhood” in great detail, yet only major landmarks further away. This suggests that such views (“fisheye views”) might be useful for the computer display of large information structures like programs, data bases, online text, etc. This paper explores fisheye views presenting, in turn, naturalistic studies, a general formalism, a specific instantiation, a resulting computer program, example displays and an evaluation.

Graphic interfaces for knowledge-based system development

Creating and debugging knowledge-based systems, such as expert systems, requires easy access to rules and facts in a vast, loosely-connected system. Three graphic representations were devised for a system development tool that integrates forward chaining, backward chaining, and full truth maintenance. In one representation, possible interactions among rules, determined by syntactically parsing the rules, are displayed as a directed graph. In a second representation, actual interactions among facts and rules are displayed dynamically. The third representation is a fish-eye view of the knowledge base that explains why a fact was asserted. In addition, the text of rules and facts is displayed in editing windows.

A Fish-eye View of Tropical Aquatic Groups

A Fish-eye View of Tropical Aquatic Groups

XXIII. Fish-eye views, and vision under water

XXIII. <i>Fish-eye views, and vision under water</i>