Abstraction, context and constraint.

In State of the Art in Computer Graphics. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1993.

The design process and the assembly of thousands of components can only be supported by systems that use a variety of presentational abstractions to reduce screen complexity. Reduction of screen complexity is required to allow the designer to focus on important detail, provide uncluttered overviews, reveal relationships, and facilitate interactive manipulation. Providing a wide selection of presentational abstractions to reduce screen complexity introduces a specification, management, and control challenge and often has the side effect of hiding features and context that are necessary in specifying or visualizing interrelationships. We explore strategies for managing abstraction, context, and constraint to minimize ambiguity in interaction and presentation.