Interaction with a color computer graphics system for archaeological sites

Our goal was to design and implement an interactive system using a color video display to assist an archaeologist in the task of analyzing the spatial distribution of various objects from an excavated site. The existing system configuration required controlling the display over a slow communications line from the mainframe CPU, and there was little local intelligence in the minicomputer display driver. The user of the system was expected to be computer-naive. Certain design principals evolved which should be applicable to graphical database query systems in other domains.