ENHANCING SITUATIONAL AWARENESS USING FISHEYE LENSES Garth Shoemaker IDELIX Software, Inc. Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6B 5L1 ABSTRACT Advances in C4I technology are constantly increasing the amount and quality of information available to command personnel. This brings to the fore the challenge of managing, navigating, and comprehending this information as a requirement for making correct and timely decisions. We discuss the use of fisheye lenses, also known as detail-in-context lenses, to aid in geo-spatial and imagery data presentation and interaction on computer displays with the goal of increasing comprehension, efficiency, and ultimately the quality of decisions. A framework is laid for the use of fisheye lenses, including the fusing of data from multiple sources, and the direct coupling of lenses with data. 1. INTRODUCTION Detail-in-context visualizations, also known as fisheye lens visualizations (see Fig. 1), have been a research topic of interest for over a decade in the fields of information visualization, scientific visualization, and human-computer interaction. Recently, with the application of detail-in-context visualizations to map viewing systems and other GISs, a natural connection has been made between the benefits offered by fisheyes, and the needs of users of C4I computer systems. Fig. 1: A fisheye lens applied to a photograph Fisheye lenses offer several benefits to users of C4I systems. The core strength of such a lens is its ability to display data at multiple scales while maintaining continuity of topography. The focal region of a lens, the central area of constant magnification, provides the user with a detailed view of a region of interest. The base region of the image, the region surrounding the fisheye lens, provides a low-resolution overview of the region. This provides the user with a means of maintaining an awareness of global context, and in the case of systems updating in real time, provides the user with the ability to monitor global changes in state. The shoulder region of the lens, the area of varying scale that connects the focal region with the base region, provides the user with valuable visual cues, and allows for an understanding of the physical relationship between focal region and base region objects. 2. RELATED LITERATURE A thorough summary of the state of the art in the early years of detail-in-context lens research is available (Leung and Apperley, 1994). A significant advance in the underlying technology of these lenses was also developed (Carpendale et al., 1995). More recently, several studies dealing with the usability benefits of fisheyes have looked at cursor steering tasks (Gutwin and Skopik, 2003), as well as the benefits fisheyes offer for browsing information on small displays (Gutwin and Fedak, 2004), such as those found on handheld devices. 3. A FISHEYE DESIGN FRAMEWORK We are developing a general design framework that will allow applications such as those under the C4I umbrella to benefit from the use of detail-in-context lenses in the representation of geo-spatial and imagery data. One novel component defined in the framework is the use of fisheye lenses for the display of fused data from multiple sources. A second component is the direct coupling of lenses with data. IDELIX Software is actively developing technology to achieve these two goals, with the possibility of incorporating the technology into their Pliable Display Technology SDK. This technology, in conjunction with the already developed rendering, user interface, and reverse “undisplace” lensing transform allowing precise lens mediated data interaction, will make possible the realization of this general design framework.