Gitta B. Salomon

A “pile” metaphor for supporting casual organization of information

A user study was conducted to investigate how people deal with the flow of information in their workspaces. Subjects reported that, in an attempt to quickly and informally manage their information, they created piles of documents. Piles were seen as complementary to the folder filing system, which was used for more formal archiving. A new desktop interface element–the pile– was developed and prototyped through an iterative process. The design includes direct manipulation techniques and support for browsing, and goes beyond physical world functionality by providing system assistance for automatic pile construction and reorganization. Preliminary user tests indicate the design is promising and raise issues that will be addressed in future work.

Working with audio: integrating personal tape recorders and desktop computers

Audio data is rarely used on desktop computers today, although audio is otherwise widely used for communication tasks. This paper describes early work aimed at creating computer tools that support the ways users may want to work with audio data. User needs for the system were determined by intervieweing people already working with audio data, using existing devices such as portable tape recorders. A preliminary prototype system – consisting of a personal tape recorder for recording and simultaneously marking audio and a Macintosh application for browsing these recordings – was built. Informal field user tests of this prototype system have indicated areas for improvement and directions for future work.

Content awareness in a file system interface: implementing the “pile” metaphor for organizing information

The pile is a new element of the desktop user interface metaphor, designed to support the casual organization of documents. An interface design based on the pile concept suggested uses of content awareness for describing, organizing, and filing textual documents. We describe a prototype implementation of these capabilities, and give a detailed example of how they might appear to the user. We believe the system demonstrates how content awareness can be not only used in a computer filing system, but made an integral part of the users experience.

Designing a desktop information system: observations and issues

This paper describes the first phase of a project to create a desktop information system for general users. The approach was to observe the problems, needs, and practices of several groups of information users, and to use these observations to drive the interface design of a prototype. In the first section of the paper, we describe problems which arise in the use of a relevance feedback system for information retrieval. In the second and third sections, we look at the needs and practices of users of both electronic and paper-based information systems. In the final section, we briefly describe the resulting design.

Using guides to explore multimedia databases

The design and implementation of a multimedia database is surveyed and an interface technique called guides is presented, which simplifies database access by alleviating the need to construct search queries. The user is given a selection of images of people who embody easily understood points of view. A user can choose a guide as a companion while browsing the database. At each database node the user is provided with the guides next choice and thus can follow the interest path of a certain type of individual. The graphical tools and interface provided to the text, graphics and sound database are presented. The design and functionality of alphabetical and topical indexes, multimedia tours, timelines and animated maps are detailed. Future directions for development are indicated. The concept of guides can be easily generalized and applied to other databases.<<ETX>>

Working towards rich and flexible file representations

T’oday, icons are commonly used to represent files. In recent years, they have become increasingly more expressive. Initially, in command line systems, text labels alone were used to identify files. With the introduction of graphical user interfaces, generic document and application icons were inutxtuced (see fig la). Over the years, file icons took on an appcamnce that reflects the application usd to crwted them (ltig lb). More rtxently, some applications (e.g. Adobe’s P’hotoshop, Apple’s QuickTime MoviePlayer) produce file icons that serve as proxies[2] of the document’s contents (Fig. lc). These proxies are essentially visual miniatures of the document. There are, however, other types of proxies possible. This paper builds on the recognized trend toward towards information-rich icons. It provides several examples Otfhow systems can emphasize a file’s unique characteristics and thereby facilitate the often necessary task of browsing.

How the Look Affects the Feel: Visual Design and the Creation of an Information Kiosk

This paper describes a visually-oriented, iterative methodology for the design of human-computer interfaces. It focuses on the implementation of an interactive electronic information kiosk, the “CHI ′89 InfoBooth.” Throughout the systems design, the interdisciplinary project team concentrated on using visual materials to simulate the users experience, rather than on writing text specifications. The paper discusses the role played by visual design in three phases of the systems development. It first describes how the use of “visual placeholders” — sketchy drawings conveying interface ideas — facilitated early design explorations. Next, it shows how “storytelling prototypes” were used to refine ideas before rigorous programming was undertaken. Finally, it describes how problems uncovered during informal user testing of functional prototypes were corrected by seemingly small changes to the interfaces appearance. Specific visual examples are provided throughout.

Transferring a designed user experience to product

How can interaction designers ensure that their work makes its way into the final implementation of a product? The language, tools and techniques for communicating design ideas within the interactive product development domain are currently emerging. This panel provides insight into promising approaches by examining the ways in which several practitioners have succeeded, and failed, at transferring their design ideas to current products.