Communications of the ACM
Toward a Map Interface Not Inherently Related to Geography
Credit: iStockPhoto.com
Hanan Samet et al.'s article "Reading News with Maps by Exploiting Spatial Synonyms" (Oct. 2014) on maps as the basis for reading news was an impressive and informative description of how a map-query interface should work. The details were enlightening, with NewsStand described as "a general framework for enabling people to search for information with a map-query interface." I am not sure if the authors intend to broaden their scope to include even perhaps non-geographically related information but hope they do.
NewsStand is, I think, part of the research behind spatial interfaces in general. I was similarly impressed when first learning about the spatial data management implementations at MIT in the late 1970s led by Richard Bolt.1 At the time, there was interest in exploiting spatial relationships as the main organizing interface. In the early 1980s, I became convinced the improving graphics of personal computers would allow spatial interfaces to become a useful and more mainstream way to access the full range of computer-stored information. I wrote two conference papers in 1984 and 1985 describing how graphical depictions of spatial orientations could be useful in finding information, including word maps for concepts. Several years later, I included screenshots of a geographic map interface using an early Macintosh to show how it might look when searching something as simple as a telephone directory.2 I went on to suggest that, in the same way maps of real geography provide a natural interface to information involving geographical relationships, "information maps" could likewise be a useful and popular interface to content not inherently related to geography.
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