Independently from the hardware part we also sketched some ideas regarding the software part of the system, the interactive visualizations of the available information. As we liked the idea of library in nature, we let our ideas get inspired by nature and tried to figure out some appropriate visualizations. We came up with several ideas regarding Trees, Flowers and Spatial Metaphors.

The following sketch board gives a overview over our sketches.

Trees are the probably most present natural life form. We also know trees as a data structure used at the algorithmics or theoretical informatics. Trees are also often used to show folder and data structures. The following sketches of trees are also intended to show a hierarchical structure of data sorted by growing direction of the tree (the newest one on the top).

Flowers are part of trees and most other botanical growing things. They can have a lot of different forms and shapes. We made use of this characteristic and came up with he following ideas:

Spatial metaphors are not directly natural stuff, but we tried out some ideas anyway. The first sketch is showing a treasure map like we know out of adventure stories. It is representing the library and is intended to help locating subject areas or single books. The other sketch shows sets of themes filled with contents and their relations to each other. We know this kind of visualization from the mathematical theory of sets.

2. Interactive Spaces ————————————————————————————— 4. Artifact Collection