3D Syllabus: Interactive Visualization of Indexes to Multimedia Training Content

Indexes such as bookmarks and recommendations are helpful for accessing multimedia documents. This paper describes the 3D Syllabus system, which is designed to visualize indexes to multimedia training content along with the information structures. A double-sided landscape with balloons and cubes represents the personal and group indexes, respectively. The 2D ground plane organizes the indexes as a table and the third dimension of height indicates their importance scores. Additional visual properties of the balloons and cubes provide other information about the indexes and their content. Paths are represented by pipes connecting the balloons. A preliminary evaluation of the 3D Syllabus prototype suggests that it is more efficient than a typical training CD-ROM and is more enjoyable to use.