Space creation pattern library
Screen-based interfaces suffer from limited space, so visual metaphors have been used to give the impression of more space. This began with operating system windows that appear to overlap, and the scrollbars that imply the existence of content that is out of view. Today new patterns are emerging, using animation and 3D.
Here are the first few, I’ll add more. Please suggest more or give examples links.
Click to interact.
Windows
Cube
Called Cube, as in one of the original examples (Mac switch login), but works with any number of sides, as in this example.
Flip stack
From the brilliant Karim Zariffa site.
3D Flythrough
Stack
Prezi
From the brilliant Prezi. Thanks Nussbox, good suggestion. Also it’s similar to the Silverlight deep zoom example.
4 Comments
Add your own1. Nussbox | April 29th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
http://prezi.com/ Prezi has done a good job of making a ZUI (zooming user interface) for just this reason. Say no to PowerPoint!!
2. Richard Apps | April 29th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
How about fisheye lens. I saw a demo of a fisheye for excel way back in the 90’s unfortunately it suffered from lack of processing power and screen resolution. In essence take a plane of regular shapes (cell or windows) and apply a fisheye to them, this allowed a huge number of units to be visible on screen at any given point in time. The fisheye effect was used to move the workable area around.
3. Tom Coombs | April 29th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Thanks Nussbox, I’ve added your suggestion.
Thanks Richard, I’ll have a go at your one.
4. Andrew Lamb | May 15th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Ever so simple but expose in OS-X displays an alternative to your ‘windows’ example but not overlapping and with plenty of margin. Kind of stating the obvious – but the sequence of
1. one window fills screen
2. mouse flick/keypress to see windows mosaic
3. click desired window to refill screen
I use it continually between tasks
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