TILE VISUALIZATIONS FOR NAVIGATING HIERARCHICAL DATA ON MOBILE DEVICES

摘要

A tile visualization has a window with a swim lane area and a panel area for displaying tiles that represent hierarchical data items. Tiles may be styled as cards. The swim lane displays an active tile and its immediate ancestors in a row or column. The active tile may be identified by a visual indicator. The panel displays one or more levels of the active tile's descendants. The descendants may be arranged in a matrix, or in columns each headed by an immediate descendant. The swim lane and panel are scrollable. A user can navigate up in the hierarchy by activating a tile in the swim lane, or down by activating a tile in the panel. Users may select one or more tiles without activating them.

主权项

1. A method of generating a tile visualization for interactively displaying hierarchical data on a user device in a computing environment, the computing environment including a software application, a user device screen, and a system for receiving user inputs, the method comprising:
retrieving hierarchical data from a data storage system, including at least a first data item, a second data item descended from the first data item, and a third data item descended from the second data item; generating for display the tile visualization including a swim lane area, an active item location, and a panel area, wherein the swim lane area includes a first tile representing the first data item, the active item location includes a second tile representing the second data item, and the panel area includes a third tile representing the third data item; forwarding the tile visualization to a device for display to a user; receiving a user input to activate the third tile; and in response to receiving the user input to activate the third tile:
retrieving a fourth data item from the data storage system, wherein the fourth data item is descended from the third data item;updating the tile visualization for display, including updating the panel area to remove the third tile and to include a fourth tile representing the fourth data item, updating the active item location to remove the second tile and to include the third tile, and updating the swim lane area to include the second tile; andforwarding the updated tile visualization to the device for display to the user.