A working demonstration of a web-based, interactive, data-driven organisational campus-based map with floor-plans.
This project is for exploring some technology that may be useful in presenting an organization's physical location as a navigable online map.
##The scenario A fictitious organization (Kelpie College) is used as a basic case study. There is one campus (Pict Harbour) covering an area of approximately 264 by 288 metres, comprising of various buildings including:
- Old Building: a three-storey square building with a central atrium and classrooms and other rooms around the sides, ramps in each of four corners.
- Tower Building: a seven-storey tower building with a spiral ramp, one room per floor, getting smaller on higher floors.
##The technology The idea is to use modern web standards and technologies that do not require plug-ins. These include:
- SVG (Scaleable Vector Graphics) for 2D floorplans.
- X3D, a 3D standard represented in XML, incorporated in HTML pages using X3DOM Javascript libraries to support a navigable 3D environment.
- Relational SQL database to hold the data.
- XML family of technologies including XPath and XSLT (for transformation).
##Usability, devices and accessibility The initial design is intended to test the technology rather than completing the user interface. There may be usability problems and the examples may not work on all devices. There will certainly be accessibility problems: however, it is expected that as a data-driven approach is a used, other interfaces could be generated (such as text descriptions and navigation steps) separately or on top of the ones presented here.