IMapping Wikis - a visual interface to structured information

The paper will be presented at the accepted by::SemWiki2006 as presented as::lightning panel.

It was written by Author::User:Heiko_Haller and is availlable for download as pdf. See also: further details.

Printed in the proceedeings.

Abstract
has topic::iMapping is a visual technique for structuring information objects. It is based on research in the fields of visual mapping techniques, Information Visualisation and cognitive psychology. iMapping uses a Zooming User Interface to facilitate navigation and to help users maintain an overview in the knowledge space. An iMap is comparable to a large whiteboard where wiki-pages can be positioned like post-its but also nested into each other. Augmenting Wikis by providing spatial browsing and zooming facilities makes it easier to structure content in an intuitive way. Especially semantic wikis, which typically contain more fine-grained content, and stress the structure between information items, can benefit from a graphical approach like iMapping, that allows to display multiple such items and multiple wiki-pages in one view. This paper describes the iMapping approach in general, and briefly how it will be applied as a rich client front-end to the SemWiki engine.