HCI Portfolio / eVITAe

eVITAe is a system which addresses the issue of managing an individual's personal multi-media files using the paradigm of events. The interface combines a map and timeline for searching files so a user can access things not by arbitrary and often media-based folders but by the associated events.

The system was built using Java Swing, with OpenMap for controlling the spatial aspect of the interface.

An evaluation of the system compared eVITAe with Windows Explorer and several other file retrieval systems and performed very well across tests. In particular, it appeared based on this study that a combination of Temporal and Spatial querying is more effective than either method alone, and more effective than non-event based searching. You can read the details of the system and the evaluation in the paper, published at ACM Multimedia Conference in 2004.

Designing Experiential Environments for Management of Personal Multimedia [ PDF ]