PygmyBrowse:A Small Screen Tree Browser

Abstract

We present PygmyBrowse, a browser that allows usersto navigate a tree data structure in a limited amount of display space. A pilot evaluation of PygmyBrowse wasconducted, and results suggest that it reduces taskcompletion times and increases user satisfaction overtwo alternative node-link tree browsers.

Keywords

Navigation, trees, browsing

ACM Classification Keywords

H.5.2 – User Interfaces (Specifically, interaction styles)

Introduction

There is a long history of storing and visualizing data intrees, including thesauri, organizational charts, indices,and more recently Extensible Markup Languages (XML).Storing information in this way creates a need toprovide interface support to navigate within suchstructures. Two main types of solutions have beenproposed to display and manipulate trees interactively:space-filling and node-link techniques.Space-filling techniques (e.g., TreeMaps [5]) have beensuccessful at visualizing trees with attribute values atthe node level. These techniques perform best whenusers care mostly about leaf nodes and their attribute

Zvi Band

Human-Computer Interaction LaboratoryUniversity of MarylandCollege Park, MD 20742, USAskeevis@skeevis.com

Ryen W. White

Human-Computer Interaction LaboratoryUniversity of MarylandCollege Park, MD 20742, USAryen@umd.edu