Advanced three-dimensional virtual environment technology, similar to that used by the film and computer games industry, can allow educational developers to rapidly create realistic online vir-tual environments. This technology has been used to generate a range of interactive Virtual Real-ity (VR) learning environments across a spectrum of…

Zoomable user interfaces (ZUIs) have received a significant amount of attention in the 18 years since they were introduced. They have enjoyed some success, and elements of ZUIs are widely used in computers today, although the grand vision of a zoomable desktop has not materialised. This paper describes the premise and promise of ZUIs along with…

The demand for pervasive access of location-related information (e.g., local traffic, restaurant locations, navigation maps, weather conditions, pollution index, etc.) fosters a tremendous application base of "Location Based Services (LBSs)". Without loss of generality, we model location-related information as "spatial objects" and the accesses…

Research on cognitive modeling of information search and Web navigation emphasizes the importance of "information scent" (the relevance of semantic cues such as link labels and headings to a reader's goal; Pirolli & Card, 1999). This article shows that not only semantic but also structural knowledge is involved in navigating the Web…

This paper documents issues in converting the Figure Classification Test to the computer. The purpose of the test, which is almost entirely visual, is to determine the subject's ability to discover rules via the visual/spatial environment. The methodology of the paper-and-pencil Figure Classification Test is as follows: the subject views a series…