Our work focuses on the design of interaction techniques for large information spaces. Our goal is not to define yet another visualization technique but to provide insights for the design of such techniques. Our design approach is based on ergonomic criteria that arose from a study of how the user perceives and manipulates a large information space. We then provide design rules that should help the designer in devising an interaction technique that verifies the ergonomic criteria. After the design of the interaction technique, the next step is software design. We establish links between our design rules/ergonomic criteria and the software architecture model. By applying our PACAmodeus model, we show how the software architecture model helps to either verify or assess the ergonomic criteria. We therefore adopt a predictive evaluation approach to the design of interaction techniques for large information spaces. We illustrate our design approach and results through our VITESSE system.