Automated Visual Sequence Composition for Small Screen Maps
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Solution Overview
Problem
Mobile devices with small screens face challenges in providing adequate context for viewing applications, such as maps, due to limited display size, leading to difficulties in discerning details and navigating regions of interest, which can result in user frustration and decreased usability.
Innovation Solution
A system and method for automatically or semi-automatically composing sequences of visual views or flows that allow users to view objects or regions from different perspectives and distances, utilizing a user interface engine and rendering component to alter perceived altitude and velocity, mimicking a flyover experience, thereby enhancing context and understanding on small displays.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If manual mechanisms for altering display region are provided, then users can view desired regions, but usability is negatively affected and user frustration increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically performs view composition and region traversal without requiring manual user input. The automated view composer analyzes the display region, identifies regions of interest, and generates composition sequences autonomously, allowing the system to serve itself rather than requiring continuous user intervention.
Solution Approach 2:
The system pre-computes and stores composition sequences for different display regions and contexts before they are needed. When a user views a map or application, the pre-computed sequences are ready for immediate execution, eliminating the need for real-time manual adjustments and reducing operational complexity.
2Area of stationary object
If small screen sizes are used in mobile devices, then device portability is improved, but adequate context for viewing applications is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The system transitions from a single static 2D display view to a temporal sequence of multiple views. By composing and displaying a series of visual frames that show different regions and perspectives over time, the system effectively adds a time dimension to the display, allowing small screens to convey information that would normally require larger display areas.
Solution Approach 2:
The system divides the overall view into multiple sequential segments or frames. Instead of attempting to display all context information simultaneously on a small screen, the composition sequence breaks down the information into manageable segments that are displayed in order, allowing users to perceive the full context through the sequence rather than requiring all information to be visible at once.
3Measurement precision
If detailed regions are displayed on small screens, then viewing precision is improved, but navigation context is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The system employs periodic transitions between detailed views and contextual views in the composition sequence. By alternating between frames showing specific details and frames showing broader context, the system maintains both precision and contextual awareness, allowing users to periodically reassess their location within the larger region while viewing detailed information.
Data Source
AI summary
A system with the ability to dynamically compose a sequence of visual views or flows allowing a single object or region, or multiple objects or regions, to be viewed from different perspectives and visual distances is described. The sequence of views can provide smooth flyovers over positions and details on objects that are deemed to be of interest, with changes in zoom level and/or velocity that are functions of the estimated complexity and/or unfamiliarity with features of the object. In an example, a flyover displaying different views on a map of a city arterial system on a small-screened mobile device is composed based on current traffic conditions, swooping up and down with parabolic trajectories, based on distances being traversed, and pausing at times over key traffic jams and other findings of interest based on the estimated visual complexity and predicted atypicality of situations.