Finding your way through cyberspace. The challenge in creating a virtual environment is to create a space where consumers can find their way in a familiar yet efficient manner. The approach is to create a "planned shopping world" that is organized by category of goods or service. This organization is expressed in this case as a set of markets or villages. Each market has a marquee floating above describing its contents while the buildings inside are three-dimensional icons for the individual retailers. The villages are connected through a series of "high-speed skyways" that enable customers to move quickly between villages. The village shown in the foreground represents a "retail hypermarket" while the villages on the horizon may represent educational or financial service spaces. The design goals are to: (1) support browsing, (2) teach the consumer the organization of the space, (3) manage the complexity of information through levels of detail.		Entering a marketplace. If a user/consumer wishes to explore a marketplace, they drop in from the top-level skyways into the streets of the marketplace. Here, the attention shifts to the individual shops of the marketplace. The other marketplaces, while still visible, are receding into the distance.

 

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