Designing an interface for supporting information visualisation in eLearning discussion forums
David P. Hamilton, David Hunt, Chris Knowles · 2002
This paper reports on the development of a prototype interface for a community discussion forum. The intention of the interface is to not only provide a means of access to a community forum, but also to portray information about that forum to the participants. The interface is therefore, being designed as being both an access mechanism to content information and a useful information visualisation tool. The interface design uses a metaphor of a 'nation of islands'. The constraints imposed by this metaphor are presented in terms of the techniques used to generate the visual representations of activity within the forum.