Case study. Narcissus: visualising information

A sophisticated visualisation tool which lead the users to form an intuitive understanding of the structure and behaviour of their domain and which provide mechanisms which allow them to manipulate objects within their system is described.

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly important that support is provided for users who are dealing with complex information spaces. The need is driven by the growing number of domains where there is a requirement for users to understand, navigate and manipulate large sets of computer based data; by the increasing size and complexity of this information and by the pressures to use this information efficiently. The paradigmatic example is the World Wide Web, but other domains include software systems, information systems and concurrent engineering. One approach to providing this support is to provide sophisticated visualisation tools which lead the users to form an intuitive understanding of the structure and behaviour of their domain and which provide mechanisms which allow them to manipulate objects within their system. The paper describes such a tool and a number of visualisation techniques that it implements.