George W. Fitzmaurice

Situated information spaces and spatially aware palmtop computers

article in this issue) will further these abilities and cause the generation of short-range and global electronic information spaces to appear lhroughout our everyday environments. How will this information be organized, and how will we interact with it? Wherever possible, we should look for ways of associating electronic information with physical objects in our environment. This raeans that our information spaces will be 3D. The SemNet system [4] is an example of a tool that offers users access to large, complicated 3D information spaces. Our goal is to go a step further by grounding and situating the information in a physical context to provide additional understanding of the organization of the space and to improve user orientation. As an example of ubiquitous computing and situated information spaces, consider a fax machine. The electronic data associated with a fax machine should be collecl:ed, associated , and colocated with [he physical device (see Figure 1). This means that your personal electronic phone book, a log of your incoming and outgoing calls, and fax messages could be accessible by browsing a situated 3D electronic information space surrounding the fax machine. The information would be organized by the layout of the physical device. Incoming calls would be located near 1:he earpiece of the hand receiver while outgoing calls would be situated near the mouthpiece. The phone, book could be found near the keypad. A log of the outgoing fax messages would be found near the fax paper feeder while a log of the incoming faxes would be located at the paper dispenser tray. These logical information hot spots on the physical device can be moved and customized by users according to their personal organizations. The key idea is that the physical object anchors the information, provides a logical means of partitioning and organizing the associated information space, and serves as a retrieval cue for users. A major design requirement of situated information spaces is the ability for users to visualize, browse, and manipulate the 3D space using a ,.RoE.ALL-portable, palmtop computer. That is, instead of a large fixed display on a desk, we want a small, mobile display to act as a window onto the information space. Since the information spaces will consist of multimedia data, the display of the palmtop should be able to handle all forms of data including text, graphics, video, and audio. Moreover, the desire to merge the physical and …

The design of a GUI paradigm based on tablets, two-hands, and transparency

An experimental GUI paradigm is presented which is based on the design goals of maximizing the amount of screen used for application data, reducing the amount that the UI diverts visual attentions from the application data, and increasing the quality of input. In pursuit of these goals, we integrated the non-standard UI technologies of multi-sensor tablets, toolglass, transparent UI components, and marking menus. We describe a working prototype of our new paradigm, the rationale behind it and our experiences introducing it into an existing application. Finally, we presents some ot the lessons learned: prototypes are useful to break the barriers imposed by conventional GUI design and some of their ideas can still be retrofitted seamlessly into products. Furthermore, the added functionality is not measured only in terms of user performance, but also by the quality of interaction, which allows artists to create new graphic vocabularies and graphic styles.

The Rockin'Mouse: integral 3D manipulation on a plane

A novel input device called the Rockin’Mouse is described and evaluated. The Rockin’Mouse is a four degree-of-freedom input device that has the same shape as a regular mouse except that the bottom of the Rockin’Mouse is rounded so that it can be tilted. This tilting can be used to control two extra degrees of freedom, thus making it suitable for manipulation in 3D environments. Like the regular mouse, the Rockin’Mouse can sense planar position and perform all the usual functions. However, in a 3D scene a regular mouse can only operate on 2 dimensions at a time and therefore manipulation in 3D requires a way to switch between dimensions. With the Rockin’Mouse, however, all the dimensions can be simultaneously controlled. In this paper we describe our design rationale behind the Rockin’Mouse, and present an experiment which compares the Rockin’Mouse to the standard mouse in a typical 3D interaction task. Our results indicate that the Rockin’Mouse is 30% faster and is a promising device for both 2D and 3D interaction.

Virtual reality for palmtop computers

We are exploring how virtual reahty theories can be applied toward palmtop computers. In our prototype, called the Chameleon, a small 4-inch hand-held monitor acts as a palmtop computer with the capabihties of a Silicon graphics workstation. A 6D input device and a response button are attached to tbe small monitor to detect user gestures and input selections for issuing commands. An experiment was conducted to evaluate our design and to see how well depth could be perceived in the small screen compared to a large 21-inch screen, and the extent to which movement of the small display (in a palmtop virtual reality condition) could improve depth perception, Results show that with very little training, perception of depth in the palmtop virtual reality condition is about as good as corresponding depth perception in a large (but static) display. Variations to the initial design are also discussed, along with issues to be explored in future research, Our research suggests that palmtop virtual reality may support effective navigation and search and retrieval, in rich and portable information spaces.

A survey of software learnability: metrics, methodologies and guidelines

It is well-accepted that learnability is an important aspect of usability, yet there is little agreement as to how learnability should be defined, measured, and evaluated. In this paper, we present a survey of the previous definitions, metrics, and evaluation methodologies which have been used for software learnability. Our survey of evaluation methodologies leads us to a new question-suggestion protocol, which, in a user study, was shown to expose a significantly higher number of learnability issues in comparison to a more traditional think-aloud protocol. Based on the issues identified in our study, we present a classification system of learnability issues, and demonstrate how these categories can lead to guidelines for addressing the associated challenges.

The Hotbox: efficient access to a large number of menu-items

The proliferation of multiple toolbars and UI widgetsaround the perimeter of application windows is an indication thatthe traditional GUI design of a single menubar is notsufficient to support large scale applications with numerousfunctions. In this paper we describe a new widget which is anenhancement of the traditional menubar which dramaticallyincreases menu-item capacity. This widget, called the Hotboxcombines several GUI techniques which are generally usedindependently: accelerator keys, modal dialogs, pop-up/pull downmenus, radial menus, marking menus and menubars. These techniquesare fitted together to create a single, easy to learn yet fast tooperate GUI widget which can handle significantly moremenu-items than the traditional GUI menubar. Wedescribe the design rationale of the Hotbox and its effectivenessin a large scale commercial application. While the Hotbox wasdeveloped for a particular application domain, the widget itselfand the design rationale are potentially useful in otherdomains.

Boom chameleon: simultaneous capture of 3D viewpoint, voice and gesture annotations on a spatially-aware display

We introduce the Boom Chameleon, a novel input/output device consisting of a flat-panel display mounted on a tracked mechanical boom. The display acts as a physical window into 3D virtual environments, through which a one-to-one mapping between real and virtual space is preserved. The Boom Chameleon is further augmented with a touch-screen and a microphone/speaker combination. We present a 3D annotation application that exploits this unique configuration in order to simultaneously capture viewpoint, voice and gesture information. Design issues are discussed and results of an informal user study on the device and annotation software are presented. The results show that the Boom Chameleon annotation facilities have the potential to be an effective, easy to learn and operate 3D design review system.

GamiCAD: a gamified tutorial system for first time autocad users

We present GamiCAD, a gamified in-product, interactive tutorial system for first time AutoCAD users. We introduce a software event driven finite state machine to model a users progress through a tutorial, which allows the system to provide real-time feedback and recognize success and failures. GamiCAD provides extensive real-time visual and audio feedback that has not been explored before in the context of software tutorials. We perform an empirical evaluation of GamiCAD, comparing it to an equivalent in-product tutorial system without the gamified components. In an evaluation, users using the gamified system reported higher subjective engagement levels and performed a set of testing tasks faster with a higher completion ratio.

Large displays in automotive design

Explores the traditional and current uses of large displays in automotive design and presents new applications that make innovative use of large-format electronic displays. The development of our applications has highlighted several issues and challenges for the future. Perhaps the overriding issue is that, ultimately, the story is about interaction, not displays. For the system to be of value, its generally not enough simply to present information. Viewers must be able to create, manipulate, explore and annotate the displayed image. Furthermore, the displays location, who uses it, what its used for and how its used are all critical in determining value.

Chronicle: capture, exploration, and playback of document workflow histories

We describe Chronicle, a new system that allows users to explore document workflow histories. Chronicle captures the entire video history of a graphical document, and provides links between the content and the relevant areas of the history. Users can indicate specific content of interest, and see the workflows, tools, and settings needed to reproduce the associated results, or to better understand how it was constructed to allow for informed modification. Thus, by storing the rich information regarding the documents history workflow, Chronicle makes any working document a potentially powerful learning tool. We outline some of the challenges surrounding the development of such a system, and then describe our implementation within an image editing application. A qualitative user study produced extremely encouraging results, as users unanimously found the system both useful and easy to use.