Yin Yin Wong

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.

A magnifier tool for video data

We describe an interface prototype, the Hierarchical Video Magnifier, which allows users to work with a video source at fine-levels of detail while maintaining an awareness of temporal context. The technique allows the user to recursively magnify the temporal resolution of a video source while preserving the levels of magnification in a spatial hierarchy. We discuss how the ability to inspect and manipulate hierarchical views of temporal magnification affords a powerful tool for navigating, analyzing and editing video streams.

Rough and ready prototypes: lessons from graphic design

This paper argues that interface design can be made more effective by borrowing techniques from graphic design. User interface designers often explore interface ideas through coded prototypes, which do not facilitate quick turnaround and require a complete interface definition. This method of prototyping is too detailed and laborious to appropriately facilitate early design decisions, such as brainstorming about the task the interface will support.

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.

Layer tool: support for progressive design

Others have studied the effect imposed by the computer medium and its tools on the design process. Black [1] proposed that finished-looking drafts produced on the computer curtail exploration of ideas. Graphic designers tend to focus on their initial concept and tweak detailed parameters such as column width or typeface rather than explore alternate designs. They concentrate on finishedIooking presentations rather than iterating structural issues. How can we provide tools that better support the earliest design phases? In [his paper, I describe a user observation of an architect at work and the interface design of a layer tool inspired from the observation.