One of my things is that the iPhone springboard is basically a simplified zoomable interface with two zoom levels. In the early days many of the icons intuitively read as mini cartoon versions of the app.
!! it did immediately stick out to me that Table 1 in [library.tuit.uz/knigiPDF/Ebsco](https://t.co/JdDuTYYmMW?amp=1) used the iPhone app launcher as its example of ZUI on the iPhone -- it's certainly not what I think of when I think of zooming on the phone
The only other interesting example I can think of is treemaps in data viz. I think you're generally right, and the other examples people are offering in this thread really aren't what was meant by "zoomable user interface." Decent bibliography/review here: [library.tuit.uz/knigiPDF/Ebsco](https://t.co/3ojIrpc5il?amp=1)
Few other digital objects can be subdivided so many times and still provide a useful chunk of information, viewed in isolation. Hard to imagine something like a CAD or a wav file where a 1/68 millionth (z18 of map quadtree) slice of the content is useful. [wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Zoom\_leve](https://t.co/IvEGybXq3E?amp=1)
Maybe the way to think about it is that you zoom from factory>machine>part, or from discography>album>song>section>sample? We've parsed the fully zoomed-out version of maps, but not of other data
Maps have semantic zooming, the most important quality of ZUIs: the elision and simplification of information as you zoom out to maintain comprehension. I was very excited about ZUIs from following
’s work in early 2000s, feel disappointed we haven’t made more of them
Zooming through layered space, with compositing, tiling, and assigning a place + size + granularity to elements, is broadly useful but takes work to set up. Britannica Online attempted this for knowledge, but never launched.
Not sure if this was mentioned already but the iOS photos app is a pretty great ZUI imo (especially since it both zooms out to see more content and let’s you scroll through time at larger / smaller intervals).
