The continuous zoom

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Abstract
Navigating and viewing large information spaces, such as hierarchically-organized networks from complex realtime systems, suffer the problems of viewing a large space on a small screen. Distorted-view approaches, such as fisheye techniques, have great potential to reduce these problems by representing detail within its larger context but introduce new issues of focus, transition between views and user disorientation from excessive distortion. We present a fisheye-based method which supports multiple focus points, enhances continuity through smooth transitions between views, and maintains location constraints to reduce the user’s sense of spatial disorientation. These are important requirements for the representation and navigation of networked systems in supervisory control applications. The method consists of two steps: a global allocation of space to rectangular sections of the display, based on scale factors, followed by degree-of-interest adjustments. Previous versions of the algorithm relied solely on relative scale factors to assign size; we present a new version which allocates space more efficiently using a dynamically calculated degree of interest. In addition to the automatic system sizing, manual user control over the amount of space assigned each area is supported. The amount of detail shown in various parts of the network is controlled by pruning the hierarchy and presenting those sections in summary form.

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