Krystian Samp

Integrating Text with Video and 3D Graphics: The Effects of Text Drawing Styles on Text Readability

There have been many studies of computer based text reading. However, only a few have considered text integrated with video and 3D graphics. This paper presents an investigation into the effects of varying (a) text drawing style (plain, billboard, Anti-Interference, shadow), (b) image polarity (positive and negative), and (c) background style (video and 3D) on text readability. Reading speed and accuracy were measured and subjective views of participants recorded. Results showed that: (a) there was little difference in reading performance for the video and 3D backgrounds; (b) the negative presentation outperformed the positive presentation; (c) the billboard drawing styles supported the best performance; subjective comments showed a preference for the billboard style. We therefore suggest, for reading tasks, that designers of interfaces for games, video, and augmented reality provide billboard style to maximize readability for the widest range of applications.

Supporting menu design with radial layouts

One of the ways of decreasing selection times in displayed menus is through the use of radial layouts which shorten distances to the items and increase the item sizes. Previous work on radial menus does not demonstrate that radial layouts are beneficial for menu hierarchies. The paper focuses on this topic. We compare two main characteristics of radial and linear layouts: a) the time it takes to find an item (i.e. visual search time), b) the time it takes to navigate to an item (i.e. pointing time). We use objective and subjective measures, two menu sizes, three menu levels, one linear and three radial layout variations. We also present requirements and the Compact Radial Layout (CRL) design which supports menu hierarchies. We assess its performance for novice and expert users.

Designing graphical menus for novices and experts: connecting design characteristics with design goals

This paper presents a design space for graphical menus. We model the design space as a set of design goals, a set of design characteristics, and connections between the two. The design goals are based on novice and expert behaviors. The connections link the choices for design characteristics with the positive or negative effects that these choices have on the design goals. The paper further synthesizes the design space into a succinct form of structured design recommendations. A case study demonstrates how these recommendations can be used to assess and compare the strengths and weaknesses of two menu designs.

Navigation time variability: measuring menu navigation errors

The subject of errors in menu studies is typically limited to reporting error rates (i.e., the number of clicks missing target items) or even completely neglected. This paper investigates menu navigation errors in more depth. We propose the Navigation Time Variability (NTV) measure to capture the total severity of navigation errors. The severity is understood as time needed to recover from the errors committed. We present a menu study demonstrating use and value of the new measure.

Browsing service registries using the Atom Interface: An application in e-Government

In this paper we present how the atom interface can be used for browsing service registries and how this is applied in the case of an e-government services platform. Although e-government is a vibrant research domain, there is notably little work regarding HCI related issues. Our work shows the kind of problems that citizens face when using existing systems, and how new design approaches, like the atom interface, can facilitate the citizen-public administration interaction.To address domain specific needs we implemented several extentions to the Atom Interface. In addition, we defined mappings between e-Government concepts, i.e. service provider, administrative document etc, and elements of Atom. Our experience so far shows that public administration can provide a very good test-bed for the Atom Interface.

Unifying the Shift and Narrow Strategies in Focus+Context Exploratory Search

In this paper we discuss two existing exploration strategies -- Shift and Narrow -- employed by Focus+Context techniques, and how they are supported in the user interface of Saffron, a web-based system enabling exploration of academic topics, authors, and publications. The Shift strategy enables the user to shift focus between different resources while the Narrow strategy enables the user to narrow the focus. Current systems typically support only one of these approaches or include them as separate interaction modes. Saffron supports both strategies in a unified user interface. An initial user study indicates that participants use and appreciate both strategies being supported simultaneously.

Social people-tagging vs. social bookmark-tagging

Tagging has been widely used and studied in various domains. Recently, people-tagging has emerged as a means to categorize contacts, and is also used in some social access control mechanisms. In this paper, we investigate whether there are differences between people-tagging and bookmark-tagging. We show that the way we tag documents about people, who we do not know personally, is similar to the way we tag online documents (i.e., bookmarks) about other categories (i.e., city, country, event). However, we show that the tags assigned to a document related to a friend, differ from the tags assigned to someone we do not know personally. We also analyze whether the age and gender of a taggee - a person, who is tagged by others - have influences on social people-tags (i.e., people-tags assigned in social Web 2.0 platforms).