1995 ACM Computer-Human Interface Conference
SIGCHI 95
- Commentary by Mike Davis. My comments on my commentary [meta commentary] are enclosed in brackets [].
The conference took place in Denver from Sunday, May 7 through Thursday, May 11 at the convention center. The convention center is a couple of blocks from the 16th street mall and is relatively small (don't ever expect SIGGRAPH to be held there). I commuted by car to and from the conference each day with Neli from Boulder and only went to the conference proper (no tutorials) which was from Tuesday through Thursday. There were about 3000 people in attendance. There were approximately an equal number of men and woman in attendance. Neli Stinchcomb was there as well as David Lesserman, and Russ (from Capri in Boulder).
The conference proceedings came in 2 volumes totaling about 1000 pages. The optimal situation would have been to read the whole proceedings before the conference so I would know what I really wanted to see... but even just scimming that much information would be difficult in the time available.
The events to see were papers, panels, short papers, demos and design sessions. There was also an exhibition, videos, posters and interactive experience. Many of the events ran concurrently and it was often difficult to choose between from 2 to 4 very interesting but simultaneously held events.
Exhibition:
The exhibition this year was about 70% book publishers, 20% GUI consulting companies and 10% commercial products. There weren't any GUI builders there this year (there were quite a few in '92).
Posters:
The coolest poster was by a student from CU. It is a visual programming language similar to Brigham Bells ChemTrains visual language (also from CU). Essentially before and after pictures are drawn by the programmer and the system extrapolates motion and constraints from these pictures. This is also similar to KidSim and some L-System editors.
The implementation of this tool was unique both for it's design as well as it's slowness. It uses a grid (like Life) and the objects have pre-defined ranges of motion. This tool would then examine the WHOLE sample space (ALL possible positions of the all objects given their range of motion) and then score how well each space corresponds to the rule set. The one with the highest score becomes the next frame of the animated behavior of the objects. This design could still be implemented to execute reasonably quickly so I don't know what really is making it so slow.
Videos:
Did not see these. They can be ordered for about $50 from ACM. I have heard that it contains videos of visualization widgets like treemaps, cone-trees, magnifiers (magic lenses), etc.
Interactive Experience:
The only memorable 'experience' was watching David Lesserman put his finger in a thimble which was on the end of a mechanical- arm-like mechanical assembly. This thimble-machine is capable of giving haptic feedback and so moving this thimble around one can FEEL 3D objects and walls. In one demo one of the 3D objects was also visible on the computer screen and acted like a ball which could be 'flicked' with the finger in the thimble and bounced off a wall and come back and hit one's finger and the finger would actually FEEL the ball hit it.
Themes:
Browsing vrs. Searching
Point & shoot vrs. perfect, all function, do it yourself UIs (based on the camera metaphor).
Direct Manipulation (DM) vrs. Agents, Actors, MS's BOB
Iterative interactive queries
Usable UIs for the WEB and interactive TV
The commercialization of research organizations (Xerox PARC, IBM Watson Research Center, ...)
My theme:
'Yeah, it's cool, but when and where is it actually useful?'
--------------------------- Wednesday -----------------------------------
*Opening Plenary
The conference opened (8:30 am) with the 1.5 hour 'Opening Plenary' session. About .5 hours was spent on greetings and awards. They apologized that Denver taxis were very reluctant to drive anyone anywhere except to and from the new airport, and that the 'fun run' was canceled because of too many legal hassles and the cost of insurance.
Then one of the most boring presentations ever endured was presented. Their one point (that the background environment in which the user performs their tasks should be explicitly considered during the design process (i.e. their physical tools, organization, politics, power, perspectives)) was obvious and boring. The only interesting part was when some very old (1930s?) video was presented that showed a user (typist) being tested (for typing speed) while breathing into a big tube while the tester turned this large (2 foot diameter) dial which generated white noise ( conclusion: the woman typed 10% faster and breathed 19% slower in a quiet room).
But we all did get a free plastic Zippy (tm) letter opener in the shape of a flat computer. It advertises CHI '96.
Short Papers: Information Visualization
[Missed KidSim paper to see this] [Missed some of Creative Prototyping Tools to see this]
Paper: AutoGeneration of StarField displays using Constraints
High level declarative language generates C++
Inquires database and displays results on 2D scatter plot automatically with widgets auto generated as well which control the query. The plot is instantly updated each time a query widget (i.e. slider) is moved/moving.
The high level language has an algebraic expression evaluator.
Paper: LiveMap
This is a map of weather patterns with clouds and graphical and textual annotations. It is updated continuously in real time from data off the net.
Clicking on a city displays video of any active weather activity at that city.
Panning around allows the user to see the parallax created by having the layers of information/annotation actually be 'above' the earth at various heights (i.e. 3D layers). This panning makes it easy to differentiate between the layers and makes the clouds look really real. The presenter mentioned that his set up at the lab allows him to move his head (which is tracked by a camera or something) to make the image automatically pan around (no hands!). Also has a (undemonstrated) feature where the layers are jittered around at sub-pixel distances (apparently Open GL allows, using anti-aliasing, to move things in 1/16 pixel increments). This is supposed to also help the user differentiate between the 3D layers. The layers (~10) are turned on and off by clicking on a legend describing the layers in the LL corner of the screen. Runs on a reality-engine...
Can compress the layers so user can be sure what city an attribute really refers to.
Paper: Designing Glyphs to represent multidimensional datasets as textures. Clayton Lewis, CU
This talk described how to chose a graphic to represent a point in multidimensional space. I.E. a point with with 6 line segments coming out of it (like a star) could be used to represent a 6 dimensional data item (i.e. an item which has 6 attributes) by varying the line segment's lengths to correspond to the data point's attribute values. These are generated for each data item and arranged side-by- side in a 2D rectangle which then looks like some kind of textured material. This is used to try to see patterns in the data.
Panel: Switch to UI Prototyping Tool Futures
Aaron Marcus: [heard about this, did not see much]
Embed metaphors, paradigms, mental models into application development tools. I.E. a knob which turns up the satire attribute of an application.
Michael Muller:
Three types of prototypes:
1. Function oriented: Artifact to show that it can be done and how. 2. Process oriented: Artifact to show that it can fit into user's current processes and perspective. 3. Communication oriented: To be used as a straw man to facilitate communication between those involved.
1 and 2 3 _______ __ object shared understanding solitary social developer->system person->person, group->group command democratic specify explore thesis synthesis
Kevin Mullet:
A prototype keeps you honest, is believable and is testable (both user testing and functional). Thot tools [and applications!] should have multiple parallel representations so that the user can edit using the most natural form (textual, graphical, scripts, forms, ...) and that these representations must be synchronized so that when one changes the others are updated. (I.E. outlines are good for representing hierarchies, arc-node graphics for networks, ...)
We need larger objects (radio boxes instead of radio buttons are needed in UI builders). Wants scalable prototyping architectures so that the demo can become a prototype can become the application.
Papers: Programming by Example
SILK: Interactive sketching for early designs Brad Meyers
This allows the designer to sketch a prototype then generate widgets from the sketches. Use gesture recognition software to interpret the sketches, handles only about 5 kinds of widgets at the present. The tools automatically records the entire history of the design.
Lunch: Had lunch at Chez Thuy Hoa, a Vietnamese restaurant that does not seem to be related to the Boulder restaurant of the similar name. One block from convention center. Food is only OK [but I'm picky].
Papers: Information Access
Paper: Xerox Parc: Presented a new metaphor: Foraging. The user, looking for data, is like a predator looking for prey. How successful they are depends on how long it takes to find, handle and eat the desired info. This can be modeled using ideas from other disciplines that look at these issues. (how much energy is taken to get that info calorie, will the user starve?).
The time spent by a user on a task can help identify the "paradigm":
Time Paradigm ---- -------- weeks/months social hours/days Adaptive/rational 1/10-10 seconds cognitive 1/100 seconds biological
[implies that some of the user's tasks (domain foraging) occur over months and becomes a social activity]
This is a study of 'informavores'.
Paper: TileBars : Xerox PARC:
The presenter described the process of searching as 'iterative refinements of queries' by the user (i.e. an infinite loop of query->results->query->...). This tool does a full-text search and divides up the docs into paragraphs of related topics [hard to do] and then generates a grid of squares which are filled in with the results of the search. Fox example: search for 'weather' and 'Colorado' and 'deaths' might generate, for a document:
xoooxxooox [paragraphs where weather is found] ooooxoooxo [paragraphs where colorado is found] xxxxxooooo [paragraphs where deaths is found]
The fifth paragraph/section contains references to all three keywords. This technique can reveal the overall relevant content of a group of documents at a glance.
Paper: An Organic User Interface for ...
"Burn cycles not people" => Asynchronous query processes.
Used for searching scientific databases which have 17 million articles?, 200 million references. Mixes searching and browsing. Arranged like (and called) a butterfly with references on the left wing and citations (cited bys) on the right. Very 3D/roomish interface. "The most scarce resource is the user's attention"=> when the mouse pauses on something, a background process auto- matically starts fetching related data.
Short Papers: UI Specification and Programming
Paper: ... Demonstrational Visual Shell
Compared this state-based/iconic language (called Pursuit) with a text based language and recorded user's actions. State based lang 2x better in accuracy but not speed or comprehension (there was a lot of questions about why and what this meant from the audience).
switched to: Short Papers: Anthropomorphism and Agents
Paper: ...Adaptive Hypermedia
There are 4 types of people:
1. Activists 2. Reflectors 3. Heuristics 4. Pragmatists
The first 3 liked lectures better than adaptive hypertext, which they liked better than static hypertext. Group 4 likes adaptive hypertext, then lectures, then static hypertext. Adaptive hypertext looks at the user's actions and generates links accordingly. The presenter decided to increase the value which they personally assigned to lectures based on this study.
Paper: Is it the computers fault?
Programmers blame the computer for some faults, rather than always blaming the engineers who built and programmed it (even after some reflection). [Does one blame the car for breaking down or all the factories that made it?].
Paper: Computer Personalities
A few basic types exist as defined in Psychology. People can key in on the type very quickly. So they made a simple, text-based pgm to test this. Using the psych truism that Submissives like submissives and Dominates like dominates they made both a D and S interface: D: You must now login S: Maybe you should think about logging in now Results showed that D's did indeed like the D interface, etc. During testing they emphasized to the users that they were testing the 'interface' not testing the 'users'. 4 measurements of a good UI: Friendly, intellectual attraction, utility and emotional satisfaction. Conclusion: the textual language in UIs is very important.
Paper: Optimal Exploration of a Application experienced for the first time. CU people
Users traverse differently but always call it optimal. Previous application experience affects them. Mentally evaluate a formulae with the following arguments: Cu = cost of undo Cw = cost of a wrong cmd Cn = number of commands Conservatives avoid mistakes at all costs Optimists think there will be something the does exactly what they want somewhere in the UI.
Paper: Automatic To-Do list
Knowledge-based editors .... Nag! Expert users construct plans Expert plans may have illegal intermediate states To-Do lists ... Remind!
The To-Do list says which menu item to click and optionally can do it "for the user". Separate domains for different users - i.e. a layout person does not need to know about electrical connections that need to be made. Q. How much advice to give? esp. when > 1 way to do something? Q. How to encode all of this expert info in the list.
WIM - Worlds in Miniature: A small image of the whole world found within the big one which the user can use to navigate. I.E. a locator window for 3D. Ex: in a 3D architectural walkthru a model of the building shows which room the user is in and the user can click to position themselves elsewhere. (p. 265 CHI Proceedings).
--------------------------- Wednesday -----------------------------------
Panel: Interface Styles: Social Interaction Vrs. Direct Manipulation
CHI is fundamentally social & natural. This is ALWAYS true, no matter the UI. It is not possible to NOT have social interaction and emotion where humans are involved. Using this info can help design products. Attributes: Personality, Politeness, Intelligence, Emotion, Roles, Perception [UI Builders need a knob to turn up the politeness of an application for submissive users].
Good UIs are:
Easy: (this is just what it is to be human: we like things easy) Sophisticated: (we want more behind the scenes) Fun: (arousal, excitement)
Examples of social (anthropomorphic) UIs: General Magic, BOB, Lion King, Picard in Compton's..., Jane Bryant Quinn in Quicken.
User's want a restaurant, not a grocery store - don't want to worry about ingredients. Want freedom from choice. BOB: Physical place: one place to go, rooms, personality, politeness, movement. BOB BOB BOB - Bob jokes, Bob is a joke, ...
--------------- Ben Shniederman - Direct Manipulation
People want to feel THEY did the job. UIs should have Rapid, Incremental, and Reversible actions. Immediate and Continuous feedback. Judicious use of Treemaps, cone-trees, ...
3 step process: Overview (user sees all of the space and things that can be done), Zoom and Filter (narrow down overview into desired area), Details-On-Demand (show details if user desired, otherwise lay-off).
Social/Anthropomorphic UIs undermines users sense of responsibility [TRUE?)] and destroy sense of accomplishment. --------------- Speaker: ??? Machines should know about social processes to motivate, attract, entertain or act as substitutes for a human. The speaker then talked about DECFACE? which puts up a face and talks to the user. Did test using Game Theory's 'prisoner's dilemma' where the computer asks the user to agree to a plan and the test is whether the user keeps their promise. They don't with non-humans. They tried a: talking dog cartoon -> user cheated. talking dog video -> user cheated. talking human image -> user cheated. talking human video -> user kept promise.
--------------- Discussion:
UIs should keep causality. The failure of talking cars and talking ATMs was discussed. Perhaps a car that told a joke to the user when the door was opened instead of saying 'please put on your seat belt' might have been more successful.
Computers are like T.V.s, not cars or ATMs. TVs have gained more and more personality of the years. But the TV is not talking, a person is talking THRU the machine. Line between real and unreal is disappearing so computer will LOOK real. People talk at the TV so blaming computers for failure is in line with this.
BOB BOB BOB problems: mobile windows, Windows Apps throw user into the pgm manager with no obvious way to get back, mixes social and computer terminology. Bob is only a surface implementation over ordinary menus. Needs deeper functionality (info seeking, commiseration,...)
Same feeling about satisfaction with auto-flash/focus cameras which do alot of the work now. Do some users feel they need perfection? Similarly with automatic transmissions... Be nice to be able to turn it off...
People want to have deal with humans in some tasks and not others: don't want to be bothered with dealing with a real human at ticket counters. [But want real human nurses.] People change their minds about this if the software is very very good. Computers should greet the user differently from time to time just like [some] real humans.
Poll of audience taken: RESULT 60% to 40% in favor of DM over social interfaces!!! (see MAC/Anti-MAC debate). [But pet owners talk to their pets!]
Panel: HCI perspectives on info superhighway (NII)
[mostly boring, no CHI issues, I shoulda been elsewhere].
Ameritech: User's do NOT want to INTERACT after a hard days work.
Judge Johnson: SunSoft: CBSR policy paper for Clinton
- Info Highway is a collection of services, not just one - Some companies and providers will dominate - TV turned out the way it did cause of the way it was funded (advertising) - Fortune 500 will control it as a vehicle for making money - Push data on you instead of you pulling desired data down. - Junk mail in TONS. - TV won't be computerized, Computers will be TVized - Internet and non-commercial local nets will be irrelevant - Electronic polling, not electoral discussion: Mobocracy, Ophracracy.
NII: the usability problem is the most demanding of any system ever developed cause of the wide range of types of users.
switched to: Panel: Browsing Vrs. Search
--------- Queries ARE links, Links ARE queries To have a Flexible UI means the UI allows for flexible info exploration. Hypertext is not a DB, it is a UI. The challenge of UI design is to communicate, using a bitmap display, between the world inside the user's head and the world (functionality) inside the computer program. User Defined Queries -> System defined Browsing --------- Furness: Tried to differentiate between Queries and Searches: Info Access Techniques: (Query / Navigation) Tasks/Activities: (Search / Browsing) Maybe query results should be posted in navigation structure Query has one kind of semantics and navigational structures have another and together might be even better. The semantics of structures are either a fn of data of a fn of the domain.
Switch to: Demonstration: Escalante
Had a neat way of adding table grids: click on the table button, then click on the screen for as many times as the number of rows desired (and horizontal lines appear one by one). Then click on the screen for as many times as the number of columns desired and the table is interactively grown. Demo'd a water flow game made with Escalante where the user (child) puts pipes together and buckets to catch the water... all built upon the 'GrandView' visual pgming environment.
Switched to: Papers: Advanced Media for Collaboration
Good UIs provide users an invitation to interact: using audio and visual cues.. Why WWW is successful? Amusement, Exploration, Socializing. People like using them but the time spent doing it needs to be justified (by seeking information and using it for communication).
Lunch with folks from IBM Watson Research Center that have been doing a project that has a UI similar to Neli's HiLife project for 5 years now. The woman (name??) had an idea I liked about expert system specification interfaces which is that they need to be accurate, simple, and "reviewable" so that experts can review what they or another expert has done so that they can trust the system.
Panel: MAC versus ANTI-MAC --------
? from Sunsoft: ANTI-MAC guidelines
- Computers are not desktops or rooms - Not always see + point, use language like humans - Direct-Manipulation keeps the user on an assembly-line type environment - there should be agents and languages - Humans can't control complex things, and don't want to control boring things. - The real world is diverse and rich - WYSIWYG is really more like What You See Is All There Is - Instead, represent meaning explicitly - use multiple views - Sometimes mode-full-ness is useful, the computer SHOULD know what we are doing, so it can help us
MAC ANTI-MAC ___ ________ Metaphor Reality DM Delegation See+point Describe and Command Consistency Diversity
Austin Henderson - Apple ----------
BORING, let's stay in the nice safe boat where we are comfy [I kid you not!]
Jacob Neilson - SunSoft -----------
Referred to Bill Buxton's graph which shows human capability as a flat line and the functionality and complexity of machines (UIs) ever rising to infinity (the lines crossing over at about the std VCR recording UI) [as delivered at CHI 92, we were there!]. Jacob, however, shows a graph where humans, after year 2000, actually get smarter, cause they learn about how to use computers (the Nintendo generation).
Also: the learning time between, say, a pictograph of a bird and the text: B-i-r-d is very different, the pictograph taking far shorter time to learn (MAC). But humans have found the alphabet quite useful and worth the time it takes to learn. The advantages of language based UIs are one can have hypotheticals, variables, criteria to select by, ... It is OK to spend some time learning a script language, esp. if one will spend whole life using it (computers).
The modern computer has 240 times more information than the MAC classic (based on screen size). Soon screens will have an additional 340 times more information available == 81,600 times more information than MAC + sound + video + ...
Don Norman - Apple ----------------
[Don Norman is a fountain of cliches and thinks all computers suck (a die-hard ubiquitous-computing fan).]
"One app fits all => the app fits nobody well" Currently we have: 1. GUI 2. WYSIWYG 3. DM 4. Hierarchical File Structure 5. Large Proprietary OS 6. Large complex Apps and proprietary data fmts 7. The std business model (planned obsolescence for software ... upgrades, bugs, must haves).
Wants longer lived software => change business model. Referred to the writer's model (originated by ???) where books were:
Handwritten - Mainframes gutenburg press - Desktops paperback book - intimate mobile computers
Wants: "Computers that make it easy to live the way we want to."
People don't want big screens, they want small mobile computers.
------- Sun Rebuttal -----------
Language has been standardized for much longer than MAC UIs, last longer than UIs (BASIC, Fortran, COBOL, are examples) and are portable. Lang has ~2 million years of usability testing. Do we want a Metaphor or a real Developmental model of the task at hand?
----- Apple Rebuttal -------
Languages are standardized? The intersection of all Fortran dialects is the empty set.
------ Sun Rebuttal - Neilson -----
Subscribe to functionality over the Net and get updates for the features that are desired automatically, as they are released. Other useless (to this particular user) features are not included at all in the app. [Cool idea]
Your data is yours, your pgms are commodities.
We want mobile computing AND big screens.
------------ Questions + Answers
Want human editors/moderators of large amounts of data.
Teach kids English today, should also teach them to use computers (languages).
People who grow up with computers are better at using them.
We do a lot of things the computer DEMANDS us to do, not what WE want to do.
Audience polled: the VOTE: 2 to 1 in favor of the MAC. [I am still in shock].
Demonstrations: Tools for designing interactive services
------ NIC: Interaction on WWW --- Dan Olsen - Brigham Young HTML document -> HTTP server -> HTML Browser -> MIME -> NICIU interpreter This format is defined for the specification and transport of whole UIs (not just data). Comes with: UI interpreter client UI Editor (generates format) UI (custom) Widget designer Others that are similar: Tcl, Sun's JAVA/HotJAVA, Scheme?, Oblique More info at http://issl.cs.byu.edu/home.html
Example: see a NIC calculator on a HTML doc, click on it, and the code is downloaded that generates the widgets for the calculator as well as it's behavior - no configuration or installation required. Still researching security requirements.
---- DynaDesigner - AT&T Bell Labs
A Visual Pgming environment so apps can be created in hours by non-pgmrs on multiple platforms. Updated recently to support Set-Top_boxs (STB). Generalized UI API after seeing commonalties between platforms (user dialog: present info, present options, get input from user). Generates a high level description language (ala NIC above and Visual ADE and ...) that is sent to an execution environment that contains a state machine and a presentation unit. Has a simulation capacity that displays (mock-ups) of the screen so that the app can be tested w/o the destination platform.
This has a cool visual language editor that has icons representing forms, database operations, ... and these icons have lines extending out which represent the possible results of the icon's operation. This is really similar to the dataflow language editor: AVS.
I have never seen STBs that have menus and stuff, maybe it puts the UI on the TV itself. The user uses a universal remote control to select options in the STB's UI. So at the bottom of the menu is a bunch of icons that represent FastFoward, Stop, Record, ... and next to the icons are what operations the icons correspond to.
The menu widgets are automatically generated. This tool helps/makes the creator focus on *Content Specification* not *UI Design*. When the application is simulated, the icons in the Visual programming editor highlight to indicate where the pgm is. Recently added HTML generation. Embedded UI cliches in language to raise the level of abstraction. Cliches: - look-up data, user selects data - user input data, verify data - user input key, verify key, load data
Allows pgm'r to customize menus a little bit: background bitmaps, color
--------------------------- Thursday -----------------------------------
Short Papers: Drawing, Painting, and Sketching
------ 3D Painting Allows user to actually draw on a 3D surface. Layers contain 2D and/or 3D objects, Objects can span layers. Does NOT have two handed operations (where the user holds the object in one hand and paints it with the other).
[Not sure what was special about this app.]
Switched to: Demonstrations: Accessing Information ---- Personalized Galaxies of Info [Missed this because I was at the above paper but Neli and David say it was very good].
---- Hyper-G Hyper-G is a language like HTML (or a protocol like HTTP?) and Harmony is it's client (like Mosaic). Draws red rectangle around pickable hyperlinks. Uses WaveFront's 3D data format. Uses Xerox Parc's 3D flying technique where the user clicks on some object in a 3D scene and then is flown there in such a way as to approach the destination head-on (along the destinations normal vector). Harmony has a display that graphically shows where the user is with respect to hyperlink-space (has a bunch on lines converging on a point (the user) then a bunch on lines fanning out from the point). I18n done in client. Has a 3D viewer of directory? trees where the user is at the root and the leaves extend toward the horizon. It dynamically loads nodes in this tree browser as the user pans around. [So this seems more mature and complete and powerful than HTML - but no accounting for why one thing succeeds and another doesn't, They ARE making HTML<->Hyper-G gateways].
Papers: Info Visualization
Paper: Hyperbolic Trees - Xerox PARC Goal is to move work from user's cognitive system to user's perceptual system. Animated transitions help this (The user pans around by selecting a node to be the 'top' or 'center' node and then the graph smoothly animates the move to this new position. Draws straight (instead of hyperbolic) lines during this operation (runs on a Sun 10 - no reality engine here)). The theme for this paper is Focus+Context which means that you can see close up where you are but can also see the entire space in the same picture/graph. (i.e. no scrollbars allowed). Can see appox. 600 - 1000 nodes in the graph at once.
Thistle leaves are hyperbolic planes - this allows these 2D leaves to attempt to fill a 3D space and be less edible.
Hyperbolic mappings preserve angles and shapes. Lots of effort went into making this work: 1. Preserve orientation of root node and lines extending from this node. 2. Keep time of animation down to one second. The system used has a continuous loop (render(), animate(), ... governor()). If the governor finds that > 1sec has elapsed since last time it was visited it tells everyone else in the loop to go faster (and they then reduce their quality). 3. The nodes get smaller and smaller as they are farther and farther from the center node. Future: 4. Address disoriented user problems by using landmarks or coloring the path from the current node back to the root. 5. Some method to show how deep in the hierarchy a node is.
Paper: GeoSpace - MIT Media LAB
[Kind of a Touch Screen GIS for Ordinary Folk] Plans/Rules are builtin to the system so that when a user wants to learn X then a number of steps are followed, which have assigned visuals, that teaches X.
Ex: "Learn Transportation Systems in Cambridge" means the user wants to learn about subways, streets, ... and a number of steps are followed which show this info to the user. The user presses on city Y, then roads near there become larger and clearer and roads farther away become dimmer. There is a legend where the user can specify how important, from 'not at all' to 'somewhat' to 'very' it is to see airports, landmarks, ...
Paper: Movable Filters - Xerox PARC Combines 2 previous good ideas into one: Magic Lenses + Dynamic Queries. Assign a filter/query to magnifying glass. Order of lenses is used to specify order of Boolean queries. Also supports Fuzzy Queries (queries which return a value between 0...1 instead of just 0 or 1). There are lenses that sort and lenses (soon?) that make bar charts. The example was a USA map that had cities as little squares, The squares underneath the lenses are partially filled if they partially match the queries. [This is cool And fun And, I think, useful.]
Discussion by Steven Roth:
1. Hyperbolic trees: Supports the tasks: a. Learning about STRUCTURE, about the HIERARCHY b. Finding particular nodes and relations between nodes. 2. GeoSpace Supports finding and exploring relations among diverse information Eliminates DB details and much of the UI 3. Movable Filters Supports analysis by identifying and filtering subsets of the information
Q. How much Context is there? How much do we need? and When? and what is the Context? Who is the User? Tasks: 1. Domain 2. Data + Resources 3. Interface
Short Papers: Web Browsing and Navigation
Paper: Auditory enhancements for Mosaic Modifications, made to browser only, to add auditory feedback (sound) to:
- shift cognitive load - monitor background processes - reinforce visual events - increase engagement - avoid visual miscues
In particular to communicate sound info about:
- progress of data xfer (startrek door-opening sound when done) - info about link destination - feedback for user actions
i.e. Progress, Errors and Switching to another program
Uses click/clack sound for motif pushbuttons [good idea! let's user know they did something]. Tries to use sound to give info about destination file type/size/errors (i.e. missing links). Sound effect design is not well researched. Sound is at a low level so doesn't disturb cubemate.
Paper: DeskCape - a new paradigm for browsing the Web Metaphor is a deck of playing cards, each web page is a card. A deck is a window, cards overlay each other in the window. Can cut and paste between decks, create new ones, ex: a hot-list deck which is sort of a clipboard. Can click on a link and the result is displayed to the right, and DOESN'T remove orig card. Can request that all pages that are linked from current be brought in. Can search for strings of text in these pages/cards.
Paper: CyberBELT This is like a few other UIs (StarFields, ...) which have a zoomable scatterplot to the left of a control panel that has widgets that specify complex queries. This app searches movies that are indexed by 10,000 actors, time of release, etc.... Queries are controlled by widgets (sliders, ...) and the display is automatically updated when the user changes a widget/query. Neli says the user can click on one of the (zoomed-in) dots and see a video clip of the movie.
Paper: VGrep: Graphical tool for exploration of textual documents Jeffrey McWhirter, CU [I missed most of this :-(] This visualizes text (and source code!) by reducing lines of text to short multi colored lines that indicate semantic and contextual information and uses indentation to display what large numbers of lines of text are all about.
Paper: Showing the context of nodes in the Web ... To help those lost in hyperspace. Use overview diagrams which show context of nodes with respect to important landmarks. Algorithmically defining landmarks is what is mostly discussed here: Nodes with high backorder and forward connectedness, large amounts of usage...
Paper: Shared Web Annotations
Architecture:
Web Document Server ------------> | |----> merge (Browser) | Annotation Document Server ----->
I presume that they hacked Mosaic or some other browser to look up the URL of a WEB document in the Annotation document Server/ repository and then downloads any annotations that have been assigned to this WEB Document.
Words in the document are highlighted if they are annotated and to the right of the highlighted word is a picture of the person who did the annotation. This picture is of the size of the text font and is like a photograph. So at a glance the user can scan a document and see what and who annotated the document. Pressing the right-btn on the mouse on a annotation displays a yellow-sticky type window with some textual annotations. Dbl-Clicking (I believe) pops up a new browser window with the annotation and follow-up annotations and keeps the original document window still visible.
Social/dynamic implications are that there will be annotation servers that subscribe to a particular viewpoint or maybe a particular person. These annotation 'webs' then will be a whole new web built on top of the current WWW. Example: Carl Sagan could have an annotation for those of us who want to know which sites he gets HIS info from. or Teachers could post an annotation for what they want their students to look at...
Problems: The annotations and original web docs need to be kept in sync and so will need version controls on both. Right now the annotations communication data flow uses a special protocol, Not http. [This is great, Webs on top of webs].