Paul Robert Calder

Applying cartoon animation techniques to graphical user interfaces

If judiciously applied, animation techniques can enhance the look and feel of computer applications that present a graphical human interface. Such techniques can smooth the rough edges and abrupt transitions common in many current graphical interfaces, and strengthen the illusion of direct manipulation that many interfaces strive to present. To date, few applications include such animation techniques. One possible reason is that animated interfaces are difficult to implement: they are difficult to design, place great burdens on programmers, and demand high-performance from underlying graphics systems.This article describes how direct manipulation human computer interfaces can be augmented with techniques borrowed from cartoon animators. In particular, we wish to improve the visual feedback of a direct manipulation interface by smoothing the changes of an interface, giving manipulated objects a feeling of substance and providing cues that anticipate the result of a manipulation. Our approach is to add support for animation techniques such as object distortion and keyframe interpolation, and to provide prepackaged animation effects such as animated widgets for common user interface interactions.To determine if these tools and techniques are practical and effective, we built a prototype direct manipulation drawing editor with an animated interface and used the prototype editor to carry out a set of human factors experiments. The experiments show that the techniques are practical even on standard workstation hardware, and that the effects can indeed enhance direct manipulation interfaces.

Is this a pattern

In the current climate, pattern is an often-misused buzzword. However, there is no clear definition of pattern-ness, perhaps because patterns do not lend themselves to prescriptive, formal definitions. The authors propose a set of characteristics that can be used as a test for pattern-ness. Each characteristic in their test describes an essential aspect of a design pattern. Recognizing these characteristics will help software designers understand, use, and write better patterns.

Animating direct manipulation interfaces

ABSTRACT If judiciously applied, the techniques of cartoon anima-tion can enhance the illusion of direct manipulation thatmany human computer interfaces strive to present. Inparticular, animation can convey a feeling of substancein the objects that a user manipulates, strengtheningthe sense that real work is being done. This paper sug-gests some techniques that application programmers canuse to animate direct manipulation interfaces, and it de-scribes tools that programmers can use to easily incor-porate the effects into their code.Our approach is based on suggesting a range of ani-mation effects by distorting the view of the manipu-lated object. To explore the idea, we added a warpingtransformation capability to the Interviews user inter-face toolkit and used the new transformation to build asimple drawing editor that uses animated feedback. Theeditor demonstrates the effectiveness of the animationfor simple operations, and it shows that the techniqueis practical even on standard workstation hardware.

Animating Widgets in the InterViews Toolkit

Current graphical user interface toolkits, by and large, provide widgets that have a static appearance. The focus of this paper is to outline some additions that we have made to a toolkit to support animated widgets, such as menus that open smoothly, buttons that bounce and slide when pushed, and animated labels.

Visualising hierarchical associations

Recent association-mining research has led to the development of techniques that allow the accommodation of concept hierarchies within the mining process. This extension results in the discovery of rules which associate not only groups of items but which are also influenced by the hierarchies within which an item may reside. Given this, there then arises a need for techniques whereby such hierarchical associations can be presented to the user. Current association rule visualisation techniques are limited, as they do not effectively incorporate or enable the visualisation of hierarchical semantics. This paper presents a review of current hierarchical and association visualisation techniques and introduces a novel technique for visualising hierarchical association rules.

Context in 3D planar navigation

One of the most frustrating barriers to the widespread use of 3D visualisation is the additional complexity in navigating 3D data. This paper details a new approach to improving navigation in 3D environments where the navigation is mainly planar. Data at a distance from the viewpoint is distorted as if projected onto a partial cylinder to approximate a plan view, thereby exposing information that may have been obscured. Previous approaches are compared with this new technique and screenshots presented. Implementation details of the technique are discussed as well as possible performance and useability issues.

Supporting cartoon animation techniques in direct manipulation graphical user interfaces

If judiciously applied, the techniques of cartoon animation can enhance the illusion of direct manipulation that many human computer interfaces strive to present. In particular, animation can convey a feeling of substance in the objects that a user manipulates, strengthening the sense that real work is being done. This paper describes algorithms and implementation issues to support cartoon style graphical object distortion effects for direct manipulation user interfaces. Our approach is based on suggesting a range of animation effects by distorting the view of the manipulated object. To explore the idea, we added a warping transformation capability to the InterViews user interface toolkit.

A new approach to collaborative frameworks using shared objects

Multi-user graphical applications currently require the creation of a set of interface objects to maintain each participating display. The concept of shared objects allows a single object instance to be used in multiple contexts concurrently. This provides a novel way of reducing collaborative overheads by requiring the maintenance of only a single set of interface objects. The paper presents the concept of a shared-object collaborative framework and illustrates how the concept can be incorporated into an existing object oriented toolkit.

Animating indirect manipulation in direct-manipulation editors

If judiciously applied, the techniques of cartoon animation can enhance the illusion of direct manipulation that many human computer interfaces strive to present. Previously, we have shown how animation helps convey a feeling of substance in the objects a user manipulates directly; this paper extends that work to indirect manipulation operations in a drawing editor-those operations initiated by command menus and buttons. Our editor uses two basic techniques: we animate changes in object geometry and graphical attributes to smooth the visual impact of the change, and we use cartooning principles to suggest what effect a geometry-changing operation will have on an object before the operation is committed. Our animations use low-level toolkit support for drawing animated views and managing time-varying data. The prototype editor demonstrates how interface developers can use such support to extend their repertoire of interaction techniques.

Investigating touch interactions for an augmented world

Touch screen interaction usually requires the user to view the input surface in order to make their selections. When the interaction platform is purposefully occluded to allow for natural interaction with an augmented reality (AR) system new issues are raised in regard to the usability of the touch sensitive interface. This paper details a user evaluation scenario that we have conducted looking at pen-based selection techniques for a personal, light-weight AR system and introduces a trial for manipulation testing that we are currently conducting. By testing various techniques we are identifying a combination of operations that will enable effective and usable communication with an unobtrusive, mobile AR system.