ABSTRACT
One of the principles of rich-prospect browsing is that the default interface should show a meaningful representation, not of some kind of hierarchical system, but of every single item in the collection (or in the search results). A meaningful representation will be different things for different types of collections. In the Delegate Browser, for instance, which is intended to help conference participants manage their social capital, the meaningful representation is a photo of the face. In the Historical Building showcase, the representation is a photo of the front of the building. Clearly, it would also be possible to show other perspectives on the buildings, including interior views. Under some conditions, the interior may be more meaningful than the exterior. For instance, when we were searching for models of stages and sets to use in the SET project, we found that there were a great many 3D models of exteriors of theatres, which we could recognise adequately (that is, they were meaningful), but they weren’t useful to us.
