iMapping: a zooming user interface approach for personal and semantic knowledge management

We present iMapping, a zooming based approach for visually organizing information objects. It was developed on top of semantic desktop technologies and especially targets the support of personal knowledge management. iMapping has been designed to combine the advantages of spatial hypertext and other proven visual mapping approaches like mind-mapping and concept mapping, which are incompatible in their original form. We describe the design and prototypical implementation of iMapping -- which is fundamentally based on deep zooming and nesting. iMapping bridges the gap between unstructured content like informal text notes and semantic models by allowing annotations with the whole range from vague associations to formal relations. First experimental evaluation of the iMapping user-interface approach indicates favorable user experience and functionality, compared with state-of-the-art Mind-Mapping software.

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