To further develop the idea of the library in nature, we collected some artifacts from the real world that should use as metaphors for the interface of the library system. Therefore, we grouped the artifacts in several categories, illustrating different interaction and visualization concepts.

To highlight relevant items or showing their relevance in relation to surrounding items, we thought about using colors (hue and saturation).

Another idea was to use the metaphor of sun rays to enlighten particular items.

Additionally we thought about visualizing importance or relevance regarding a particular topic inspired by the height of gras. The higher the culm, the more important the related item. This idea can optionally be combined with the idea of color coding regarding different categories or topics.

One idea we came up with regarding the question how to visualize similarity of items was the distance. The nearer several items are, the more similar they are to each other. This distance can be represented as age rings of a trunk, considering the natural metaphor, where items within the rings nearer to the center of the trunk have a bigger similarity to the item in the middle.

To illustrate hierarchies, we came up with some different branching metaphors, lend from nature. The most obvious one was the branches of trees, with the leaves standing for different items.

Another possible visualization can be by orienting at the form of stinging nettles, which allow by their fanned out leaves to represent different categories and hierarchies.

As searching and browsing most likely comes with a set of resulting items, we needed to think about some visualizations how we could represent these results in a natural way. We thought about a bouquet of flowers, including different types of flowers of different size and color. This would allow us to visualize similarities, grouping as well as importance of the resulting items.

After having scanned a set of results, searchers usually want to have more information about an individual item. So the second step was to collect some ideas how we could display and allow opening of items.

Regarding zooming issues, nature inspired us by the form of pine cones, to allow five finger zooming via opening and closing gestures.

Another way to open item arose from regarding the swans at the Bodensee opening their wings and closing them again. We thought about using this metaphor to open subthemes on particular topics.

3. Interactive Visualizations ————————————————————————————– 5. 3D-Prototype