Interactive Campus Maps

In what follows I present examples that manifest the four basic designs that are commonly employed when constructing web based interactive maps. These designs can be classified as:

Hierarchial In this mode, a foundational map is presented and in a series of click thrus, that map is drilled down to smaller spatial scales and to no information levels. This kind of approach is appealing to those that believe information should be stored and accessed in a hierarchical manner. I strongly suspect this is the approach we would adopt here as its pretty standard. The downside of this approach is two-fold:
- Designers can get carried away with the number of hierarchical levels that represent information so that the user does a lot of clicking.
- The information is never shown in a connected way on one interface (e.g. one web page).
A good example of this drill down approach can be found here for the case of the University of Missouri (Click on the MU Flagship Campus area and go from there).
Overlays This is the approach adopted by maps.google.com . Integrated with searchable database and manually zoomable, the user types in a string and locations are shown. In principle this is a very powerful interface (which is why Google Maps choose it) as its quite versatile. The key to the success of this approach lies in how robustly the database can be queried to generate an overlay. The underlying map could be a satellite photo or a street map. Below I show two examples for the Pearl District. One that overlays the location of Art Gallery's on a satellite photo and the other that shows a restauraunt overlay on a street map.
Dynamically Rescalable Maps This approach is usually not adopted because of significant coding problems. It can only really be done in JAVA. The philosophy here as that all the layers of map are "exposed" to the user one one screen and through zooming and panning with the mouse, various layers can be activated. The example link below show the easternpower grid simulation. You can zoom in with control up arrow and as you zoom in, new text appears. At any zoom you can pan using the arrow keys. This kind of interface has enormous potential.
Single Screen Highlighter This is the most creative approach I have seen but can only be done in FLASH. The example link below is for downtown bend Oregon. As you mouseover the building titles in text, you will see the 3D map highlighted showing the location of that building/restaurant and you will see some information appear in the lower left. This interface I think effectively combines the hierarchical and overlay designs into one form on one screen. Personally, I think its highly effective at managing the information.