Andreas Dieberger
outdated contact address kept on this page for consistency reasons!
Dept. for Design and Assessment of Technology
Vienna University of Technology
A-1040 Vienna, Moellwaldplatz 5/187
Tel: (+43-1) 504-11-86 Fax: (+43-1) 504-11-88
email: andreas.dieberger@acm.org
Posted to alt.hypertext, sci.virtual-worlds, comp.human-factors, alt.cyberspace in May 1993
A few weeks ago I posted a message asking about spatial metaphors to the following newsgroups: alt.hypertext, alt.cyberspace, comp.human-factors (it was reposted to sci.virtual-worlds too). I promised to post a summary of my findings after some time. Sorry for the long delay - I was at the InterCHI in Amsterdam for more than a week.
What I wanted to find out was: which spatial metaphors are used for information systems already. An example of what I looked for is the metaphor of the 'library': A user can walk into such a library (this library could be depicted as a real library on the screen) and walk around looking at the bookshelves. The books on the shelves would depict various documents. Such a metaphor could prove useful especially in VR-systems where the user could see the objects (shelves and books) in 3D. A related metaphor is the cyber-bureau.
A simpler example is the good old desktop-metaphor most of us use every day. (Perhaps some purists would claim that the desktop metaphor is not a real spatial metaphor since it is too flat.
So here is what I found out about literature / systems using such metaphors.
First I should mention all those adventure games which in fact use a typical case of spatial metaphor: The user / hero is wandering around in a set of rooms / caves (what ever they are called in the game) and encounters other 'objects' he interacts with. Such objects can be treasures, weapons, villains and the like. It is even possible to encounter other users in this information-space so that the game is a sort of CSCW-environment. It can be claimed that such a system is in fact a spatial metaphor for a hypertext. Nielsen however (in Nielsen: "Hypertext and Hypermedia", Academic Press 1990, pp. 9-10) says that in hypertext the aim is to let the user discover information / reach his goal as fast / easy as possible whereas in an adventure games the aim of the game is to obscure the path to the information looked for. What I find particularly interesting about those games (besides the fact that I like playing them from time to time) is that they often convey this spatial metaphor without any graphics (text-adventure).
Some fine ideas for spatial metaphor (even if they probably have not been implemented) are described in Fabrice Florin: "Information Landscapes" in: S.Ambron, K. Hooper (Ed.): "Learning with interactive Multimedia", Microsoft Press '90, pp. 27-49. Fabrin brings metaphors for five sorts of data:
1) collections of data -> fields in the landscape. Fields with older data 'vanish to the horizon'
2) interactive documentaries -> visualized as a kind of village
3) annotated movies -> hava a linear structure and can be visualized as rivers, highways and the like
4) networks of guides -> other persons in the landscape
5) hands-on activities -> range from simple games to complex simulations
Another concept of a landscape you can walk about is described in a paper by Mark Bernstein which he submitted for Hypertext'93. He writes about information-mining, information-manufacturing and Information-farming. (The information-farming-metaphor somehow origins in the visual representation of the Aquanet-system (see: Marshall: Aquanet: "A Hypertext Tool to Hold Your Knowledge in Place", Proc. Hypertext '91, pp.261-276).
In information-farming you again see you data as fields. Such fields contain data which is worked on, but that is no raw-data. Raw-data is held in information-swamps or -forests or (if it is data coming in continuously) it could be visualized as information-stream or -river. Data that is static and will not be changed for some time is collected in barns. All those elements are joined together by roads and plazas - social places inhabited by farmers and their agents. The information-farming metaphor is a CSCW-metaphor because several users may work in the landscape together (they are depicted using an "avatar"). There are a few laws every avatar must obey (for instance he can be at only one location at one time,...). Avatars may use animals to help them (agents). Private work and private social transactions take place in houses. They have a single owner who controls access.
Other examples of spatial representation for CSCW-environments are to be found in the VR-literature. One example is a system which also shows several users in a VR-world. They introduce the notions of focus and nimbus, two concepts used to represent the users interest in various things (focus), and how much they project their presence to others (nimbus). These two concepts are enhanced to the notion of an aura, "an enabler of communication between two people in a virtual space". If the auras of two users intersect you get a conference. There are also blackboards and meeting-tables in this Space. (For instance a meeting-table / meeting-room has a rather big aura so that many people fit into it for larger conferences). For a more detailed description of that look at:
Fahlen et al.: "A Space based model for User Interaction in Shared Synthetic Environments", Proc. InterCHI '93
or: Benford, Fahlen: "A Spatial Model of Interaction in Large Virtual Environments", to appear in Proc. 3rd European Conf. on CSCW, Milan, September 1993
or: Benford et al. "From Rooms to Cyberspace: Models of Interaction in large Virtual Computer Spaces", to appear in "Interacting with computers" (a Butterworth-Heinmann journal) 1993
Yet another metaphor for an information system is the information-city. It tries to use the knowledge everybody of us has to navigate in a new city. For instance if you come to Vienna the first time you will at first know only a few streets around your hotel. After some time you expand the space you know to orientate yourself in. You collect landmarks which help you in navigation. Probably you will never know the whole city but whenever you encounter a landmark you know again where you are. In fact this is not a very new idea. The metaphor of navigating in a city is a standard example for hypertext-navigation. In a tight relation to the information-city are all house-metaphors where you walk about in a house and find your information there. A special case of this is the library mentioned above.
Another example is the Xerox Parc 3D/rooms project (see for instance Mark.A.Clarkson: "An easier Interface", Byte 2/1992, pp. 277-282). Rooms are "Multiple virtual worksets". Rooms are connected by doors and windows. Within the rooms you can find various tools to do your work. This project heavily uses 3-dimensional visualization (perspective wall, cone-trees and so on).
(see also: G.G. Robertson, S.K.Card, J.D.Mackinley: "Information Visualization Using 3D Interactive Animation", Comm. of the ACM, Vol 36, No.4, April 1993, pp. 57-71)
Another nice reference in this topic is the keynote lecture Jay Bolter held at the european conference on hypertext in december 1992 (Milan). He suggested two approaches to combining VR and hypertext in the future:
a) Hypertextualising the Space = give graphic elements in VR-space symbolic significance by "Writing on the world" (examples are stone-inscriptions or information-kiosks in VR)
b) Spatializing the Hypertext: Extending the 2D-ideas of context-maps, graphical browsers and the like into 3D. An example is a cluster of hypertext-nodes hanging in VR-space. By visualizing such clusters you can see a close relationship within several nodes instantly.
Perhaps some of you out there know the hypertext-system "Storyspace". I heard rumours that somebody (XeroxParc?) plans to make a 3D-version of this software. Has somebody more information about that?
Other literature references: On some of them I cannot comment on since I don't have them (yet).
Stephen Ellis: "Pictorial communication in virtual and real environments". This sounds very interesting - can anybody give me more information on this book?
Jonathan Spence: "The memory Palace of Matteo Ricci"
Frances Yates: "The Art of memory". It is a study of how human beings have attempted to organize thought through history - all of which is spatial (this description is not mine - I don't have this book yet).
Lakoff, Johnson: "metaphors we live by", Univ. of Chicago Press 1980. This surely is a book everybody should read who works with metaphors.
David Gelernter: "Mirror Worlds - or The Day Software puts the universe in a shoebox", Oxford Univ. Press,1991. To me it looks a bit like too much science-fiction.
One of the replies told me to look at the work of Thomas Furness (which I didn't manage to do until now because of time constaints and probably a bad mail-adress)
A replay contained: "Since you are in Vienna, wandering down to Rome and spending some time in the Vatican museum is also far richer than current VR research or implementation ... now that is a spatial information system!" - Yes I will do so when I next come to Rome (perhaps in summer)
Reading all this you probably notice that many references are *very* new. One reason for this is (in my opinion) the growing interest in VR-systems. Another reason is that User-Interfaces of the next generation probably will be built around 'more spatial' metaphors than we have in todays systems. In the InterCHI proceedings there are several comments argueing that todays interfaces are too 'flat'. So it was no surprice to me that at the InterCHI (End of april in Amsterdam) there was a whole workshop titled "Spatial metaphors".
That's all for now. I wish to thank for all the information you sent to me. If you happen to find something else be so kind to mail me a pointer.
Andreas
last modified on 10/26/96
Andreas Dieberger