Overview

It's a chicken-and-egg situation we invent tools to help with the work we do; then, the tools shape the way the work gets done. Familiarity and skill with tools creates in-sights into other kinds of work that could now be done using the tools. This often results in a need to further refine the tools. In this way, e-graphics adds a whole new spectrum of tools that can be used to produce visualizations of design and planning ideas, while it also creates new notions about the kinds of visualization products one wishes to create. The result is that the technology changes the way we think about what we do and how we do it.

E-graphics changes many basic assumptions associated with traditional methods of generating graphic depictions. Some of the changes are deceptively simple, yet quite dramatic. For example, much of the conceptual incongruity arises from associating the size and media of the graphic to be produced with human scale metrics for the physical act of drawing. When working digitally, there is no linkage between the work of creating the graphic and the finished size and form of the graphic. Another misconception concerns our notion of each graphic as being produced as a single discrete piece of work on fixed media. The working media for digital graphics is ethereal in nature, with final display of the work possible in numerous sizes and formats. Still another misconception concerns viewing a finished graphic as a stand-alone product. With e-graphics, a finished digital...