Context Lenses - Document Visualization and Navigation Tools for Rapid Access to Detail.
Andreas Dieberger, Daniel M. Russell · International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction · 2001
We introduce visualization and navigation tools -Context Lenses (CL) -which use a condensed representation of a document to provide a global overview of the distribution of key items as well as a focus view of their immediate context. The Context Lens is a focus+context dynamic information filtering tool allowing users to optimally choose how to access a particular piece of information. CLs support efficient information finding tasks by allowing rapid skimming of documents and document collections. Certain tasks can be accomplished using only the context information provided in the context lens, eliminating the need to access the actual document. Thus, use of a CL can eliminate the need to scroll within a document, or – in a distributed environment – to download the document. This hints at interesting applications for the display of search results and document collections on wireless PDAs. We present a user study about two different Context Lenses.