Teaching:TUW - UE InfoVis WS 2006/07 - Gruppe 01 - Aufgabe 1 - Bifocal Display

Definition

A bifocal display provides a detailed view of the current region of interest while providing a more compressed view of information outside that region of interest.

Original concept

The desire to present all the relevant information within its context usually results in an extremely cluttered and confusing display. If only the current region of interest is displayed, one has to arrange for a mechanism to quickly switch to relevant information before and after the region of interest. Even so, much of the surrounding context is lost as it's not as easily accessible.

This is known as the "focus+context" problem. To address this problem, Spence and Apperley proposed their "bifocal display".