Interactive Data Units: A Framework to Support Rich Graphical Data Presentations on Heterogeneous Devices

The use of mobile computing systems continues to increase among a wider diversity of end-users. On desktop computers, a lot of research in the area of interactive visualization of graphical information has been done, but there is a growing opportunity to have the possibility of creating scalable and animated graphical data presentations on heterogeneous mobile devices. Latest trends in the mobile phone and PDA community (e.g. games and MMS) emphasize the demand for a better support of such rich graphical data that is scalable over multiple platforms. In this paper we present mobile services for the automotive after sales market that support the user in coping with the increasing functionality and complexity of cars and their repair procedures. We introduce a generic framework to support the retrieval and visualization of operating instructions and car repair information according to the device, enduser (or consumer of the data) and car repair guidelines. As its core the framework provides the concept of Interactive Data Units (IDUs): graphical data blocks with a clean separation of structure, style and animation.