As a community, human-computer information and interface designers have tended to avoid use of fisheyes, and multi-scale presentations with their attendant distortion because of concern about how this distortion may lead to confusion and misinterpretation. On the other hand, for centuries, hand-created information presentations have made regular use of distortion to provide emphasis and actually enhance readability. Is the lack of use in computer presentations because thus far in our computational uses of distortion we have failed to provide adequate support that allows people to comprehend the manner in which the information is being presented? We describe a study about relative difficulty in reading distortions that investigates the effect of the use viewing cues such as the cartographic grid and shading on people's ability to interpret distortions. We look at two interpretation issues: whether people can locate the region of magnification and whether people can read the relative degree of magnification of these regions. We present the findings of this study and a discussion of its results.

The Notification Collage (NC) is a groupware system where distributed and co-located colleagues comprising a small community post media elements onto a real-time collaborative surface that all members can see. Akin to collages of information found on public bulletin boards, NC randomly places incoming elements onto this surface. People can post assorted media: live video from desktop cameras; editable sticky notes; activity indicators; slide shows displaying a series of digital photos, snapshots of a person's digital desktop, and web page thumbnails. User experiences show that NC becomes a rich resource for awareness and collaboration. Community members indicate their presence to others by posting live video. They regularly act on this information by engaging in text and video conversations. Because all people can overhear conversations, these become active opportunities to join in. People also post items they believe will be interesting to others, such as desktop snapshots and vacation photos. Finally, people use NC somewhat differently when it is displayed on a large public screen than when it appears on a personal computer.

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