Stan Ruecker, Milena Radzikowska and Stéfan Sinclair. Visual Interface Design for Cultural Heritage: a Guide to Rich-Prospect Browsing. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 2011. ISBN 9781409404224 (hardcover), 9781409404231 (e-book).

Abstract

The design of digital information interaction tools is quickly evolving with the rapid increase in the number and size of online collections, as well as the technological capabilities offered by software development and communication technologies. Visual Interface Design for Cultural Heritage: a Guide to Rich-Prospect Browsing aims to support this evolution by facilitating the progression from the merely functional tool, through one that is easily used, towards a pleasurable information interface. The concept of rich-prospect browsing is introduced as part of a theoretical framework of visual browsing interfaces which also includes Gibson’s well known affordances. This framework is used to describe and analyse an impressive set of novel visually mediated information interaction techniques that aim to improve the quality of the interactions between humans and digital information. This book is highly relevant to those interested in the design of human-information interactions, information visualisation, use and presentation of metadata, and digital libraries.

Keywords

• Human-information interaction
• visual browsing
• metadata
• digital libraries