Home

Map Zoom-By-Icon Design

Task: Instead of using an arbitrary number to represent map detail, reveal the level of detail in the interface.

Background

Traveling to a new place, I needed to get a sense of how far apart it and other destinations are. Doing this required a lot of zooming in and out to find the right level of detail and coverage area. The arbitrary numbers associated with each level of detail didn't afford me any information about that amount of detail until I had already loaded the page. Also, some levels of detail didn't seem significantly different from their neighbors, increasing the time needed to find the right level (Hick's Law).

Designs

Here's the original design:

yahoo map

Here's the redesign. I replaced the numbers with details of each map level and reduced the number of levels in half. The beveled buttons are a little campy, but you get the idea.

a new yahoo map

Observations