User interfaces for environmental information systems - interactive maps or catalog structures? Or both?

摘要

The development of user interfaces for environmental information systems (EIS) can be a complex task due to heterogeneous data, including factual as well as geographic data. An easy-to-use user interface can be designed by projecting multi-dimensional catalog structures onto well-known tree structures. On the other hand, georeferenced objects lead to the increased use of maps. Catalogs and maps are two different navigation paradigms. They can be used exclusively or together. This paper discusses which of the two paradigms is useful in which case and what are the implications of joint use. The discussion is based on the results of two projects and gives insights for requirements in the future.