2011-06-30 | Pattern-based Interaction Concepts

During the creation of a knowledge platform meaningful and understandable navigation and interaction concepts have to be worked out to visualise the knowledge. Thus users are able to simply follow and explore the meaning of the knowledge. Therefore it is necessary to know which kind of knowledge shall be visualised and to set the objectives for the visualisation. These aspects are especially relevant for developing adequate solutions for the users and their tasks. Within the use case ALEXANDRIA of the THESEUS program, which was initiated by the German Ministry of Economy and Technology (BMWi), several interaction concepts have been developed, e. g. concepts to navigate on timelines (timeline browser) and to explore relationships between personalities (relation ship browser). These interaction concepts support users to explore the content and the relationships of the presented data, and thus extend their knowledge.

In this report we introduce an interaction concept for browsing historical information data on maps which also was originated within the use case ALEXANDRIA of the THESEUS program. A map browser is particulary suited for data which contains information about locations (e. g. geo-coordinates). This report describes a pattern-based approach for drawing up a map browser beginning with the tasks of the user and the derived requirements to the point of the finished concept and its prototypical implementation, so that the complete process of conception is covered.

Link to Report