18.4 Evolution of the CYBERMAP GUI

This section illustrates the development of the CYBERMAP graphical user interface. Until now there have been five iterations of the CYBERMAP GUI.

Figure I.97 First version of CYBERMAP user interface

In the first version we used a rectangular layout with the most frequently linked node in the upper left corner. The only advantage of this approach was its easy implementation. There are many disadvantages, such as no easy discernible root, and the fact, that links that are between nodes in the same horizontal line can not be distinguished.

We developed in the first version a history mechanism that was evaluated superior to others implemented in later versions in our user tests. We used partly blackened bars underneath the hyperdrawers, where the blackening of the bar indicated the number of already visited nodes of that particular hyperdrawer.

Figure I.98 Second version of CYBERMAP user interface

In the second version of the CYBERMAP GUI we replaced the grid layout of the hyperdrawers by vertically growing trees. This eliminates the problem of indistinguishable links and also displays most significant hyperdrawers closer to the root of the trees. The thickness of the lines corresponds to the degree of similarity: the more similar two hyperdrawers are, the thicker is their connecting line. We also allowed multitrees (see chapter 9) in this version.

Figure I.99 Third version of CYBERMAP user interface

In the third version we used color coding to indicate the significance of links as well as the browsing history. Somewhat surprisingly, users liked the partly black bars better to denote the percentage of nodes read in a particular hyperdrawer than varying degrees of red. Obviously humans are much better in perceiving differences on a linear scale than judging varying color intensities.

Figure I.100 Hierarchical version of CYBERMAP user interface

The third version of the CYBERMAP GUI was refined to permit the display of hierarchical hyperdrawers, where one hyperdrawer could include other CYBERMAPs (see chapter 19 for a ful description of hierarchical CYBERMAPs). This was judged very useful, as hyperdrawers otherwise might get very large quickly. One problem that was not yet satisfactorily solved in this version was the distinction between the top-level CYBERMAP and other maps as well as between lower-level maps.

The next section illustrates the usage of CYBERMAP by describing a sample browsing session.