Zoom Quilt is a collaborative art project based on Macromedia Flash that illustrates what a 3D Zooming User Interface (ZUI) might look and feel like.
Zoom Quilt Demonstrates Look & Feel Of 3D Zooming Interface
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Well I guess this shows Flash is good for something.
Seriously I see it as a great prototyping tool for experimental interfaces. Who knows what other ideas are out there, on some Flash developers computer?
This is interesting too…
http://www.3dtop.com/what.htm
I like it because it does not nag, steal your attention, bother or whatever… just run it and it will replace the desktop backdrop with a “3d world” with icons etc. – but does not do anything with your windows. Kind of cool.
Rather than the Zoom Quilt, which is fun and pretty but not much more than a bit of eye candy, there was another link[1] on that page by Ken Perlin no less. This has a simple Java Applet about a zooming interface that could have more relavance to User Interface design. It looks like it would be particually well suited for use with compound documents and OpenDoc[2] like enviroments.
@Mat
Cool looking enviroment, reminded me of OpenCroquet[3] which is always a good thing. Nice to see people pushing UI adn actually doing something different.
[1] http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/zoom/TestButton.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc
[3] http://www.opencroquet.org/
It’s just downright TRIPPY!
…that the zoomquilt thing is highly hypnotic? It’s almost as bad as the visualisation things that play in winamp… I’m going back to stare at it now…
I’m sorry but what I see is just one weird picture and clicking doesn’t change it (Where is Waldo?). I’m running on Safari/Mac OS X
…not very useful. This is more art than technology.
malkia: Click and drag!
Charlie: Of course Zoomquilt as it is now is not useful and catches attention through its art-ish look, but it is showing a concept which might be very useful in 3D interfaces.
Article about ZUI’s which compares good v bad points:
http://www.advogato.org/article/788.html
The Java demo seemed a bit buggy or otherwise flashy. Could be due to my system though. But how is this different from the flopped VRML? Or from SGI’s FSV for IRIX 5.3 (as seen in Jurassic Parc)? Those are just 2 of the many examples. There’s a lot of research and demos in this area, but not something usable to the masses yet.
To the person who commented about Winamp’s AVS (as example): some people actually *like* that though they’re not necessarily vieweing that while rethinking some philosophic subject. Personally, i don’t mind such aspects and like them every now and then as long as i’m also able to turn it off.
Also, some people just can’t stand this kind of interfaces just like some people can’t stand FPS because of epileptic or claustrofobic results.
Jef Raskin talks about zoomable user-interfaces in his book The Humane Interface. On his website, he has a demonstration of how such an interface might behave. It’s a very large flash file though (about 8mb):
http://humane.sourceforge.net/the/zoom.html