Benjamin B. Bederson

Technology probes: inspiring design for and with families

We describe a new method for use in the process of co-designing technologies with users called technology probes. Technology probes are simple, flexible, adaptable technologies with three interdisciplinary goals: the social science goal of understanding the needs and desires of users in a real-world setting, the engineering goal of field-testing the technology, and the design goal of inspiring users and researchers to think about new technologies. We present the results of designing and deploying two technology probes, the messageProbe and the videoProbe, with diverse families in France, Sweden, and the U.S. We conclude with our plans for creating new technologies for and with families based on our experiences.

Single display groupware: a model for co-present collaboration

We introduce a model for supporting collaborative work betweenpeople that are physically close to each other. We call this modelSingle Display Groupware (SDG). In this paper, we describe themodel, comparing it to more traditional remote collaboration, Wedescribe the requirements that SDG places on computer technology,and our understanding of the benefits and costs of SDG systems.Finally, we describe a prototype SDG system that we built and theresults of a usability test we ran with 60 elementary schoolchildren.

A review of overview+detail, zooming, and focus+context interfaces

There are many interface schemes that allow users to work at, and move between, focused and contextual views of a dataset. We review and categorize these schemes according to the interface mechanisms used to separate and blend views. The four approaches are overview+detail, which uses a spatial separation between focused and contextual views; zooming, which uses a temporal separation; focus+context, which minimizes the seam between views by displaying the focus within the context; and cue-based techniques which selectively highlight or suppress items within the information space. Critical features of these categories, and empirical evidence of their success, are discussed. The aim is to provide a succinct summary of the state-of-the-art, to illuminate both successful and unsuccessful interface strategies, and to identify potentially fruitful areas for further work.

Automatic thumbnail cropping and its effectiveness

Thumbnail images provide users of image retrieval and browsing systems with a method for quickly scanning large numbers of images. Recognizing the objects in an image is important in many retrieval tasks, but thumbnails generated by shrinking the original image often render objects illegible. We study the ability of computer vision systems to detect key components of images so that automated cropping, prior to shrinking, can render objects more recognizable. We evaluate automatic cropping techniques 1) based on a general method that detects salient portions of images, and 2) based on automatic face detection. Our user study shows that these methods result in small thumbnails that are substantially more recognizable and easier to find in the context of visual search.

PhotoMesa: a zoomable image browser using quantum treemaps and bubblemaps

PhotoMesa is a zoomable image browser that uses a novel treemap algorithm to present large numbers of images grouped by directory, or other available metadata. It uses a new interaction technique for zoomable user interfaces designed for novices and family use that makes it straightforward to navigate through the space of images, and impossible to get lost.PhotoMesa groups images using one of two new algorithms that lay out groups of objects in a 2D space-filling manner. Quantum treemaps are designed for laying out images or other objects of indivisible (quantum) size. They are a variation on existing treemap algorithms in that they guarantee that every generated rectangle will have a width and height that are an integral multiple of an input object size. Bubblemaps also fill space with groups of quantum-sized objects, but generate non-rectangular blobs, and utilize space more efficiently.

Space-scale diagrams: understanding multiscale interfaces

Big information worlds cause big problems for interfaces. There is too much to see. They are hard to navigate. An armada of techniques has been proposed to present the many scales of information needed. Space-scale diagrams provide an analytic framework for much of this work. By representing both a spatial world and its different magnifications explicitly, the diagrams allow the direct visualization and analysis of important scale related issues for interfaces.

Toolkit design for interactive structured graphics

Here, we analyze toolkit designs for building graphical applications with rich user interfaces, comparing polylithic and monolithic toolkit-based solutions. Polylithic toolkits encourage extension by composition and follow a design philosophy similar to 3D scene graphs supported by toolkits including JavaSD and Openlnventor. Monolithic toolkits, on the other hand, encourage extension by inheritance, and are more akin to 2D graphical user interface toolkits such as Swing or MFC. We describe Jazz (a polylithic toolkit) and Piccolo (a monolithic toolkit), each of which we built to support interactive 2D structured graphics applications in general, and zoomable user interface applications in particular. We examine the trade offs of each approach in terms of performance, memory requirements, and programmability. We conclude that a polylithic approach is most suitable for toolkit builders, visual design software where code is automatically generated, and application builders where there is much customization of the toolkit. Correspondingly, we find that monolithic approaches appear to be best for application builders where there is not much customization of the toolkit.

SpaceTree: supporting exploration in large node link tree, design evolution and empirical evaluation

We present a novel tree browser that builds on the conventional node link tree diagrams. It adds dynamic rescaling of branches of the tree to best fit the available screen space, optimized camera movement, and the use of preview icons summarizing the topology of the branches that cannot be expanded. In addition, it includes integrated search and filter functions. This paper reflects on the evolution of the design and highlights the principles that emerged from it. A controlled experiment showed benefits for navigation to already previously visited nodes and estimation of overall tree topology.

Jazz: an extensible zoomable user interface graphics toolkit in Java

Abstract : In this paper the authors investigate the use of scene graphs as a general approach for implementing two-dimensional (2D) graphical applications, and in particular Zoomable User Interfaces (ZUIs). Scene graphs are typically found in three-dimensional (3D) graphics packages such as Suns Java3D and SGIs OpenInventor. They have not been widely adopted by 2D graphical user interface toolkits. To explore the effectiveness of scene graph techniques, the authors have developed Jazz, a general-purpose 2D scene graph toolkit. Jazz is implemented in Java using Java2D, and runs on all platforms that support Java 2. This paper describes Jazz and the lessons we learned using Jazz for ZUIs. It also discusses how 2D scene graphs can be applied to other application areas. (5 figures, 27 refs.)

Pad++: A Zoomable Graphical Sketchpad For Exploring Alternate Interface Physics

We describe Pad++, a zoomable graphical sketchpad that we are exploring as an alternative to traditional window and icon-based interfaces. We discuss the motivation for Pad++, describe the implementation, and present prototype applications. In addition, we introduce an informational physics strategy for interface design and briefly contrast it with current design strategies. We envision a rich world of dynamic persistent informational entities that operate according to multiple physics specifically designed to provide cognitively facile access and serve as the basis for design of new computationally-based work materials.