Prototypes

Tue Apr 22 13:25:22 CEST 2008

1     Introduction
2     Using basic shape to communicate
3     Using images as an icons
4     Using charts as icons
5     Changing backgound

1 Introduction

Prototypes

These prototypes are build using Google maps, and fixed query as input data. In this case we are presenting locations of news items that have person property "Zidane". For all examples the query is the same, but we use different visual modalities to present the result of this query.

2 Using basic shape to communicate

Prototype: Using basic shape to communicate size 1

In this prototype, I used Google build in options for drawing lines and polylines. To communicate size of the set being presented, the map presents cicrcle with radius lineary dependant on the number of items in the set.

Formula: radius = const + 0.01 * count

Prototype: Using basic shape to communicate size 2

Formula: radius = const + 0.02 * count

Prototype: Using basic shape to communicate size 3

Formula: radius = const + 0.05 * count

Here, the size of the circles introduced high visual noise. This also illustrates the need for tuning parameters to avoid visula noise.

Prototype: Using basic shape to communicate size 4

Formula: radius = const + 0.10 * count

Here, the size of the circles introduced high visual noise.

3 Using images as an icons

Using image as an icon 1

Here, I just used the first image from the result set as an icon. I expected that it will be completely nonsense, but surprisengly there it does not look that bad, and there are two very important properties of this presentation:

If the image is representative, it is immediatelly clear what type of photos we are looking at: footbal match, cellebration, night, day.
Different locations can be grouped by using the same image. In this example, the image with france flag says that four different locations are connected by the same event, and the same image.