A Coil Map is an animated geographic representation
which dynamically transforms the location and size of nodes of information
in response to specified input events.
The transformation maintains each node
in loose proximity to a recognizable geographic position.
The Coil Map is initially placed on top of a geographic image,
dividing the image uniformly into a number of cells by recursively slicing it
into two nodes, and then each of those nodes into two nodes, etc, up until
a specified depth.
The Coil Map listens for events that occur within the geographic regions
as defined by those cells. After each input event occurs, the map is transformed.
The event causes a chain of shifts in various nodes as it "uncoils"--
propagates the new information upwards-- recursively upward to from the leaf node
(where the event occurred) to the root node.
The effect of this series of transformations is that the more dramatic changes
occurring near the area where the event occurred are mitigated
as it propagates to more distant neighbors.
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The Coil Map algorithm was used in the Data Flow project to show the real-time popularity of particular geographic regions and how this popularity changed over the course of the day.
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Coil Maps can also be used effectively as a way to interactively highlight a particular element within a larger set of data. A interactive application that lets a user navigate a set of historical photographs was used to demonstrate Coil Maps at MAST 2009.