Flip Zooming. The development of an information visualization technique

Doctoral thesis, 2000

This thesis describes the development of a Focus+Context information visualization technique called Flip Zooming. Based on two initial examples of the technique, the work reported here expands the description and functionality of the technique by the development of a number of applications as well as by some theoretical contributions. The thesis consists of six papers and a frame. The first paper describes The Digital Variants Browser, which supports comparative studies of variants of texts. The second paper, Hierarchical Flip Zooming, describes how the technique can be generalized to support hierarchical visualization by use of nested instances of Flip Zooming. The third paper describes WEST (a WEB Browser for Small Terminals), an application of Flip Zooming for the visualization of web pages on hand-held computers. The fourth paper, PowerView, describes another application designed for hand-held computers; this application supports tasks that require several different types of information. The fifth paper introduces a framework for describing Flip Zooming and other Focus+Context visualizations as higher-order visualizations. The sixth paper identifies preconceptions about Focus+Context techniques that have become apparent during the work on Flip Zooming, and shows how these preconceptions can be transgressed to create novel visualizations. The frame relates the Flip Zooming technique to other information visualization techniques and describes the development of the technique by using Mackay and Fayard's model for research within Human-Computer Interaction. It concludes by presenting specific guidelines for developing future Flip Zooming applications, as well as general guidelines for developing other information visualization techniques.