Hybrid meetings limit inclusion for remote participants. The Hybridge experimental system provides different interfaces for remote and room endpoints, focusing on improving inclusion via shared spatiality and remote agency. In-room participants see remotes on displays around a table, and remotes see video integrated into a digital twin. Remotes can choose where to appear and from where they view the room. We tested Hybridge in a within-subjects study of group survival tasks. An in-person condition was followed by a counterbalanced order of hybrid traditional videoconferencing ("Gallery") and Hybridge. We found that co-presence and agency differences between in-room and remotes were alleviated in Hybridge but remained in Gallery. Physical presence for remotes was higher in Hybridge than Gallery. Conversation flow was better in Hybridge than Gallery, but ease of awareness was not different. We argue that asymmetry should be embraced when designing hybrid meeting systems, with inclusivity achieved by tailoring features for the needs of different endpoints.

We present AdHocProx, a system that uses device-relative, inside-out sensing to augment co-located collaboration across multiple devices, without recourse to externally-anchored beacons – or even reliance on WiFi connectivity.

With the shift to hybrid meetings in work spaces, there is an increasing need to create a more inclusive hybrid meeting experience where people meeting together in a room interact with those joining remotely. This paper describes a design exploration, implementation, and evaluation of Perspectives, a novel hybrid meeting system that aimed to create an inclusive and equitable space for hybrid meetings. Perspectives digitally composites everyone into a virtual room so that each person has a unique but spatially consistent viewpoint into the meeting. The user study compared Perspectives with three commercially available UX designs for hybrid meetings: Gallery, Together Mode, and Front Row. Results from this study revealed key benefits of Perspectives, including supporting natural interactions, creating a strong sense of co-presence, and reducing cognitive load. Results from the study also helped iterate on the design principles of Perspectives, which offer important insights on supporting hybrid meetings.

AirConstellations supports a unique semi-fixed style of cross-device interactions via multiple self-spatially-aware armatures to which users can easily attach (or detach) tablets and other devices. In particular, AirConstellations affords highly flexible and dynamic device formations where the users can bring multiple devices together in-air — with 2–5 armatures poseable in 7DoF within the same workspace — to suit the demands of their current task, social situation, app scenario, or mobility needs. This affords an interaction metaphor where relative orientation, proximity, attaching (or detaching) devices, and continuous movement into and out of ad-hoc ensembles can drive context-sensitive interactions. Yet all devices remain self-stable in useful configurations even when released in mid-air.

Knowledge work increasingly spans multiple computing surfaces. Yet in status quo user experiences, content as well as tools, behaviors, and workflows are largely bound to the current device-running the current application, for the current user, and at the current moment in time. SurfaceFleet is a system and toolkit that uses resilient distributed programming techniques to explore cross-device interactions that are unbounded in these four dimensions of device, application, user, and time. As a reference implementation, we describe an interface built using SurfaceFleet that employs lightweight, semi-transparent UI elements known as Applets. Applets appear always-on-top of the operating system, application windows, and (conceptually) above the device itself. But all connections and synchronized data are virtualized and made resilient through the cloud. For example, a sharing Applet known as a Portfolio allows a user to drag and drop unbound Interaction Promises into a document. Such promises can then be fulfilled with content asynchronously, at a later time (or multiple times), from another device, and by the same or a different user.

Drawing boards offer a self-stable work surface that is continuously adjustable. On digital displays, such as the Microsoft Surface Studio, these properties open up a class of techniques that sense and respond to tilt adjustments. Each display posture-whether angled high, low, or somewhere in-between-affords some activities, but not others. Because what is appropriate also depends on the application and task, we explore a range of app-specific transitions between reading vs. writing (annotation), public vs. personal, shared person-space vs. task-space, and other nuances of input and feedback, contingent on display angle. Continuous responses provide interactive transitions tailored to each use-case. We show how a variety of knowledge work scenarios can use sensed display adjustments to drive context-appropriate transitions, as well as technical software details of how to best realize these concepts. A preliminary remote user study suggests that techniques must balance effort required to adjust tilt, versus the potential benefits of a sensed transition.

Many status-quo interfaces for tablets with pen + touch input capabilities force users to reach for device-centric UI widgets at fixed locations, rather than sensing and adapting to the user-centric posture. To address this problem, we propose sensing techniques that transition between various nuances of mobile and stationary use via postural awareness. These postural nuances include shifting hand grips, varying screen angle and orientation, planting the palm while writing or sketching, and detecting what direction the hands approach from. To achieve this, our system combines three sensing modalities: 1) raw capacitance touchscreen images, 2) inertial motion, and 3) electric field sensors around the screen bezel for grasp and hand proximity detection. We show how these sensors enable posture-aware pen+touch techniques that adapt interaction and morph user interface elements to suit fine-grained contexts of body-, arm-, hand-, and grip-centric frames of reference.

The 2007 launch of the Apple iPhone marked a turning point in the evolution of the experience of humans interacting with and/or through digital technology. Despite leaving ample room for improvement, the iPhone made clear that the field had matured to the point where the primary challenge no longer lay in individual interactions with individual technologies; rather, it had shifted to battling the every-growing, largely technology induced complexity in the social interactions within and amongst the societies of technologies and people. By analogy, the better we get at the architecture and construction of houses, the more the need for urban planning escalates.

Modern tablets support simultaneous pen and touch input, but it remains unclear how to best leverage this capability for bimanual input when the nonpreferred hand holds the tablet. We explore Thumb + Pen interactions that support simultaneous pen and touch interaction, with both hands, in such situations. Our approach engages the thumb of the device-holding hand, such that the thumb interacts with the touch screen in an indirect manner, thereby complementing the direct input provided by the preferred hand. For instance, the thumb can determine how pen actions (articulated with the opposite hand) are interpreted. Alternatively, the pen can point at an object, while the thumb manipulates one or more of its parameters through indirect touch. Our techniques integrate concepts in a novel way that derive from marking menus, spring-loaded modes, indirect input, and multi-touch conventions. Our overall approach takes the form of a set of probes, each representing a meaningfully distinct class of application. They serve as an initial exploration of the design space at a level which will help determine the feasibility of supporting bimanual interaction in such contexts, and the viability of the Thumb + Pen techniques in so doing.

WritLarge is a freeform canvas for early-stage design on electronic whiteboards with pen+touch input. The system aims to support a higher-level flow of interaction by 'chunking' the traditionally disjoint steps of selection and action into unified selection-action phrases. This holistic goal led us to address two complementary aspects: SELECTION, for which we devise a new technique known as the Zoom-Catcher that integrates pinch-to-zoom and selection in a single gesture for fluidly selecting and acting on content; plus: ACTION, where we demonstrate how this addresses the combined issues of navigating, selecting, and manipulating content. In particular, the designer can transform select ink strokes in flexible and easily-reversible representations via semantic, structural, and temporal axes of movement that are defined as conceptual 'moves' relative to the specified content.

Touchscreens continue to advance including progress towards sensing fingers proximal to the display. We explore this emerging pre-touch modality via a self-capacitance touchscreen that can sense multiple fingers above a mobile device, as well as grip around the screen's edges. This capability opens up many possibilities for mobile interaction. For example, using pre-touch in an anticipatory role affords an "ad-lib interface" that fades in a different UI--appropriate to the context--as the user approaches one-handed with a thumb, two-handed with an index finger, or even with a pinch or two thumbs. Or we can interpret pre-touch in a retroactive manner that leverages the approach trajectory to discern whether the user made contact with a ballistic vs. a finely-targeted motion. Pre-touch also enables hybrid touch + hover gestures, such as selecting an icon with the thumb while bringing a second finger into range to invoke a context menu at a convenient location. Collectively these techniques illustrate how pre-touch sensing offers an intriguing new back-channel for mobile interaction.

We explore the contextual details afforded by wearable devices to support multi-user, direct-touch interaction on electronic whiteboards in a way that-unlike previous work-can be fully consistent with natural bimanual-asymmetric interaction as set forth by Guiard.

We explore grip and motion sensing to afford new techniques that leverage how users naturally manipulate tablet and stylus devices during pen + touch interaction. We can detect whether the user holds the pen in a writing grip or tucked between his fingers. We can distinguish bare-handed inputs, such as drag and pinch gestures produced by the nonpreferred hand, from touch gestures produced by the hand holding the pen, which necessarily impart a detectable motion signal to the stylus. We can sense which hand grips the tablet, and determine the screen's relative orientation to the pen. By selectively combining these signals and using them to complement one another, we can tailor interaction to the context, such as by ignoring unintentional touch inputs while writing, or supporting contextually-appropriate tools such as a magnifier for detailed stroke work that appears when the user pinches with the pen tucked between his fingers. These and other techniques can be used to impart new, previously unanticipated subtleties to pen + touch interaction on tablets.

This paper presents a new tap and gesture hybrid method for authenticating mobile device users. The new technique augments four simple gestures - up, down, left, and right, to the dominant digit lock technique, allowing users to either tap or perform any one of the four gestures on the digit keys. It offers in total 6250000 unique four-symbol password combinations, which is substantially more than the conventional techniques. Results of a pilot study showed that the new technique was slower and more error prone than the digit lock technique. However, we believe with practice it could get faster and more accurate. Also, most users were comfortable and all of them felt more secured while using the new technique.

We contrast the Chameleon Lens, which uses 3D movement of a mobile device held in the nonpreferred hand to support panning and zooming, with the Pinch-Flick-Drag metaphor of directly manipulating the view using multi-touch gestures. Lens-like approaches have significant potential because they can support navigation-selection, navigation-annotation, and other such compound tasks by off-loading navigation to the nonpreferred hand while the preferred hand annotates, marks a location, or draws a path on the screen. Our experimental results show that the Chameleon Lens is significantly slower than Pinch-Flick-Drag for the navigation subtask in isolation. But our studies also reveal that for navigation between a few known targets the lens performs significantly faster, that differences between the Chameleon Lens and Pinch-Flick-Drag rapidly diminish as users gain experience, and that in the context of a compound navigation-annotation task, the lens performs as well as Pinch-Flick-Drag despite its deficit for the navigation subtask itself.

GatherReader is a prototype e-reader with both pen and multi-touch input that illustrates several interesting design trade-offs to fluidly interleave content consumption behaviors (reading and flipping through pages) with information gathering and informal organization activities geared to active reading tasks. These choices include (1) relaxed precision for casual specification of scope; (2) multiple object collection via a visual clipboard; (3) flexible workflow via deferred action; and (4) complementary use of pen+touch. Our design affords active reading by limiting the transaction costs for secondary subtasks, while keeping users in the flow of the primary task of reading itself.

We explore the design of a system for three-way collaboration over a shared visual workspace, specifically in how to support three channels of communication: person, reference, and task-space. In two studies, we explore the implications of extending designs intended for dyadic collaboration to three-person groups, and the role of each communication channel. Our studies illustrate the utility of multiple configurations of users around a distributed workspace, and explore the subtleties of traditional notions of identity, awareness, spatial metaphor, and corporeal embodiments as they relate to three-way collaboration.

We describe techniques for direct pen+touch input. We observe people's manual behaviors with physical paper and notebooks. These serve as the foundation for a prototype Microsoft Surface application, centered on note-taking and scrapbooking of materials. Based on our explorations we advocate a division of labor between pen and touch: the pen writes, touch manipulates, and the combination of pen + touch yields new tools. This articulates how our system interprets unimodal pen, unimodal touch, and multimodal pen+touch inputs, respectively. For example, the user can hold a photo and drag off with the pen to create and place a copy; hold a photo and cross it in a freeform path with the pen to slice it in two; or hold selected photos and tap one with the pen to staple them all together. Touch thus unifies object selection with mode switching of the pen, while the muscular tension of holding touch serves as the "glue" that phrases together all the inputs into a unitary multimodal gesture. This helps the UI designer to avoid encumbrances such as physical buttons, persistent modes, or widgets that detract from the user's focus on the workspace.

Inspired by our automotive and product design customers using large displays in design centers, visualization studios, and meeting rooms around the world, we have been exploring the use and potential of large display installations for almost a decade. Our research has touched on many aspects of this rich design space, from individual tools to complete systems, and has generally moved through the life cycle of a design artifact: from the creation phase, through communication and collaboration, to presentation and dissemination. As we attempt to preserve creative flow through the phases, we introduce social structures and constraints that drive the design of possible point solutions in the larger context of a digital design studio trail environment built in the lab. Although many of the interactions presented are viable across several design phases, this article focuses primarily on facilitating collaboration. We conclude with critical lessons learned of both what avenues have been fruitful and which roads to avoid. This article lightly covers the whole design process and attempts to inform readers of key factors to consider when designing for designers.

Current practice in Human Computer Interaction as encouraged by educational institutes, academic review processes, and institutions with usability groups advocate usability evaluation as a critical part of every design process. This is for good reason: usability evaluation has a significant role to play when conditions warrant it. Yet evaluation can be ineffective and even harmful if naively done ‘by rule ’ rather than ‘by thought’. If done during design brainstorming, it can kill creative ideas that do not conform to current interface norms. If done prematurely during early system design, the many interface issues seen can kill what would could have been an inspired vision. If done to verify an academic prototype, it may incorrectly suggest a design’s worthiness rather than offer a meaningful critique of how it would be adopted and used in everyday practice. If done without regard to how cultures adopt technology over time, then today's reluctant reactions by users will forestall tomorrow's eager acceptance. Traditional usability evaluation should not be used to validate very early design stages or culturally-sensitive systems. Other reflective and critical methods should be considered in their stead. Author Keywords Usability testing, interface critiques, sketching, cultural

ThinSight is a novel optical sensing system, fully integrated into a thin form factor display, capable of detecting multi-ple fingers placed on or near the display surface. We describe this new hardware in detail, and demonstrate how it can be embedded behind a regular LCD, allowing sensing without degradation of display capability. With our approach, fingertips and hands are clearly identifiable through the display. The approach of optical sensing also opens up the exciting possibility for detecting other physical objects and visual markers through the display, and some initial experiments are described. We also discuss other novel capabilities of our system: interaction at a distance using IR pointing devices, and IR-based communication with other electronic devices through the display. A major advantage of ThinSight over existing camera and projector based optical systems is its compact, thin form-factor making such systems even more deployable. We therefore envisage using ThinSight to capture rich sensor data through the display which can be processed using computer vision techniques to enable both multi-touch and tangible interaction.

We present a study comparing usability testing of a single interface versus three functionally equivalent but stylistically distinct designs. We found that when presented with a single design, users give significantly higher ratings and were more reluctant to criticize than when presented with the same design in a group of three. Our results imply that by presenting users with alternative design solutions, subjective ratings are less prone to inflation and give rise to more and stronger criticisms when appropriate. Contrary to our expectations, our results also suggest that usability testing by itself, even when multiple designs are presented, is not an effective vehicle for soliciting constructive suggestions about how to improve the design from end users. It is a means to identify problems, not provide solutions.

No abstract available.

We describe a new type of graphical user interface widget, known as a "tracking menu." A tracking menu consists of a cluster of graphical buttons, and as with traditional menus, the cursor can be moved within the menu to select and interact with items. However, unlike traditional menus, when the cursor hits the edge of the menu, the menu moves to continue tracking the cursor. Thus, the menu always stays under the cursor and close at hand.In this paper we define the behavior of tracking menus, show unique affordances of the widget, present a variety of examples, and discuss design characteristics. We examine one tracking menu design in detail, reporting on usability studies and our experience integrating the technique into a commercial application for the Tablet PC. While user interface issues on the Tablet PC, such as preventing round trips to tool palettes with the pen, inspired tracking menus, the design also works well with a standard mouse and keyboard configuration.

We review the Boom Chameleon, a novel input/output device consisting of a flat-panel display mounted on a tracked mechanical armature. The display acts as a physical window into 3D virtual environments, through which a one-to-one mapping between real and virtual space is preserved. The Boom Chameleon is further augmented with a touch-screen and a microphone/speaker combination. We created a 3D annotation application that exploits this unique configuration in order to simultaneously capture viewpoint, voice and gesture information. Results of an informal user study show that the Boom Chameleon annotation facilities have the potential to be an effective, and intuitive system for reviewing 3D designs.

Previous systems have explored the challenges of designing an interface for automotive styling which combine the metaphor of 2D drawing using physical tape with the simultaneous creation and management of a corresponding virtual 3D model. These systems have been limited to only 2D planar curves while typically the principal characteristic curves of an automotive design are three dimensional and non-planar. We present a system which addresses this limitation. Our system allows a designer to construct these non-planar 3D curves by drawing a series of 2D curves using the 2D tape drawing technique and interaction style. These results are generally applicable to the interface design of 3D modeling applications and also to the design of arm's length interaction on large scale display systems

We introduce the Boom Chameleon, a novel input/output device consisting of a flat-panel display mounted on a tracked mechanical boom. The display acts as a physical window into 3D virtual environments, through which a one-to-one mapping between real and virtual space is preserved. The Boom Chameleon is further augmented with a touch-screen and a microphone/speaker combination. We present a 3D annotation application that exploits this unique configuration in order to simultaneously capture viewpoint, voice and gesture information. Design issues are discussed and results of an informal user study on the device and annotation software are presented. The results show that the Boom Chameleon annotation facilities have the potential to be an effective, easy to learn and operate 3D design review system.

We present an alternate interface for 3D modeling for use on large scale displays. The interface integrates several concepts specifically selected and enhanced for large scale interaction. These include 2D construction planes spatially integrated in a 3D volume, enhanced orthographic views, smooth transitions between 2D and 3D views, tape drawing as the primary curve and line creation technique, visual viewpoint markers, and continuous two-handed interaction.

Rotating a piece of paper while drawing is an integral and almost subconscious part of drawing with pencil and paper. In a similar manner, the advent of lightweight pen-based computers allow digital artwork to be rotated while drawing by rotating the entire computer. Given this type of manipulation we explore the implications for the user interface to support artwork orientation. First we describe an exploratory study to further motivate our work and characterize how artwork is manipulated while drawing. After presenting some possible UI approaches to support artwork orientation, we define a new solution called a rotating user interface (RUIs). We then discuss design issues and requirements for RUIs based on our exploratory study.

Tape drawing is the art of creating sketches on large scale upright surfaces using black photographic tape. Typically used in the automotive industry, it is an important part of the automotive design process that is currently not computerized. We analyze and describe the unique aspects of tape drawing, and use this knowledge to design and implement a digital tape drawing system. Our system retains the fundamental interaction and visual affordances of the traditional media while leveraging the power of the digital media. Aside from the practical aspect of our work, the interaction techniques developed have interesting implications for current theories of human bimanual interaction.

One of the recent trends in computer input is to utilize users' natural bimanual motor skills. This article further explores the potential benefits of such two-handed input. We have observed that bimanual manipulation may bring two types of advantages to human-computer interaction: manual and cognitive. Manual benefits come from increased time-motion efficiency, due to the twice as many degrees of freedom simultaneously available to the user. Cognitive benefits arise as a result of reducing the load of mentally composing and visualizing the task at an unnaturally low level which is imposed by traditional unimanual techniques. Area sweeping was selected as our experimental task. It is representative of what one encounters, for example, when sweeping out the bounding box surrounding a set of objects in a graphics program. Such tasks cannot be modeled by Fitts' Law alone and have not been previously studied in the literature. In our experiments, two bimanual techniques were compared with the conventional one-handed GUI approach. Both bimanual techniques employed the two-handed “stretchy” technique first demonstrated by Krueger in 1983. We also incorporated the “Toolglass” technique introduced by Bier et al. in 1993. Overall, the bimanual techniques resulted in significantly faster performance than thestatus quoone-handed technique, and these benefits increased with the difficulty of mentally visualizing the task, supporting our bimanual cognitive advantage hypothesis. There was no significant difference between the two bimanual techniques. This study makes two types of contributions to the literature. First, practically we studied yet another class of transaction where significant benefits can be realized by applying bimanual techniques. Furthermore, we have done so using easily available commercial hardware in the context to our understanding of why bimanual interaction techniques have an advantage over unimanual techniques. A literature review on two-handed computer input and some of the relevant bimanual human mototr control studies is also included.

This paper reports on the experimental evaluation of a GraspableUser Interface that employs a "spacemultiplexing" input scheme in which each function to be controlled has a dedicated physical transducer, each occupying its own space.This input style contrasts the more traditional "time-multiplexing" input scheme which uses one device (such as the mouse) to control different functions at different points in time.A tracking experiment was conducted to compare a traditional GUI design with its time-multiplex input scheme versus a Graspable UI design having a space-multiplex input scheme.We found that the space-multiplex conditions out perform the time-multiplex conditions.In addition, we found that the use of specialized physical form factors for the input devices instead of generic form factors provide a performance advantage.We rugue that the specialized devices serve as both visual and tactile functional reminders of the associated tool assignment as well as facilitate manipulation due to the customized form factors.

An experimental GUI paradigm is presented which is based on the design goals of maximizing the amount of screen used for application data, reducing the amount that the UI diverts visual attentions from the application data, and increasing the quality of input. In pursuit of these goals, we integrated the non-standard UI technologies of multi-sensor tablets, toolglass, transparent UI components, and marking menus. We describe a working prototype of our new para-digm, the rationale behind it and our experiences introduc-ing it into an existing application. Finally, we presents some ot the lessons learned: prototypes are useful to break the barriers imposed by conventional GUI design and some of their ideas can still be retrofitted seamlessly into products. Furthermore, the added functionality is not measured only in terms of user performance, but also by the quality of interaction, which allows artists to create new graphic vocabularies and graphic styles.

Article Free Access Share on Beating the limitations of camera-monitor mediated telepresence with extra eyes Authors: Kimiya Yamaashi Hitachi Research Laboratory, Hitachi Ltd., 7-1-1 Omika-cho Hitachi-shi, Ibaraki-ken 319-12 Japan Hitachi Research Laboratory, Hitachi Ltd., 7-1-1 Omika-cho Hitachi-shi, Ibaraki-ken 319-12 JapanView Profile , Jeremy R. Cooperstock Telepresence Project, University of Toronto, 10 King's College Road, Toronto ON M5C 3G4, Canada Telepresence Project, University of Toronto, 10 King's College Road, Toronto ON M5C 3G4, CanadaView Profile , Tracy Narine Telepresence Project, University of Toronto, 10 King's College Road, Toronto ON M5C 3G4, Canada Telepresence Project, University of Toronto, 10 King's College Road, Toronto ON M5C 3G4, CanadaView Profile , William Buxton Telepresence Project, University of Toronto, 10 King's College Road, Toronto ON M5C 3G4, Canada and Alias/Wavefront, 110 Richmond Street East, Toronto ON M5C 1P1, Canada Telepresence Project, University of Toronto, 10 King's College Road, Toronto ON M5C 3G4, Canada and Alias/Wavefront, 110 Richmond Street East, Toronto ON M5C 1P1, CanadaView Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '96: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsApril 1996 Pages 50–57https://doi.org/10.1145/238386.238402Published:13 April 1996Publication History 26citation738DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations26Total Downloads738Last 12 Months38Last 6 weeks9 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteView all FormatsPDF

The literature has long suggested that the design of computer input devices should make use of the fine, smaller muscle groups and joints in the fingers, since they are richly represented in the human motor and sensory cortex and they have higher information processing bandwidth than other body parts.This hypothesis, however, has not been conclusively verified with empirical research.The present work studied such a hypothesis in the context of designing 6 degree-of-freedom (DOF) input devices.The work attempts to address both a practical need designing efficient 6 DOF input devices -and the theoretical issue of muscle group differences in input control.Two alternative 6 DOF input devices, one including and the other excluding the fingers from the 6 DOF manipulation, were designed and tested in a 3D object docking experiment.Users' task completion times were significantly shorter with the device that utilised the fingers.The results of this study strongly suggest that the shape and size of future input device designs should constitute affordances that invite finger participation in input control. K e y w o r d sInput devices, 3-D interface, 6 DOF input, motor control, muscle group differences, hand, fingers, arm, homunculus model.

"Half-QWERTY" is a new, one-handed typing technique designed to facilitate the transfer of two-handed touch-typing skill to the one-handed condition. It is performed on a standard keyboard with modified software or on a special half-keyboard with full-size keys. In an experiment using touch typists, hunt-and-peck typing speeds were surpassed after 3 to 4 hr of practice. Subjects reached 50% of their two-handed typing speed after about 8 hr. After 10 hr, all subjects typed between 41% and 73% of their two-handed speed, ranging from 23.8 to 42.8 words per minute (wpm). In extended testing, subjects achieved average one-handed speeds as high as 60 wpm and 83% of their two-handed rate. These results are important for providing access to disabled users and for designing compact computers.

This study investigates human performance when using semitransparent tools in interactive 3D computer graphics environments. The article briefly reviews techniques for presenting depth information and examples of applying semitransparency in computer interface design. We hypothesize that when the user moves a semitransparent surface in a 3D environment, the “partial-occlusion” effect introduced through semitransparency acts as an effective cue in target localization—an essential component in many 3D interaction tasks. This hypothesis was tested in an experiment in which subjects were asked to capture dynamic targets (virtual fish) with two versions of a 3D box cursor, one with and one without semitransparent surfaces. Results showed that the partial-occlusion effect through semitransparency significantly improved users' performance in terms of trial completion time, error rate, and error magnitude in both monoscopic and stereoscopic displays. Subjective evaluations supported the conclusions drawn from performance measures. The experimental results and their implications are discussed, with emphasis on the relative, discrete nature of the partial-occlusion effect and on interactions between different depth cues. The article concludes with proposals of a few future research issues and applications of semitransparency in human-computer interaction.

A basic tenet of "Ubiquitous computing" (Weiser, 1993 [13]) is that technology should be distributed in the environment (ubiquitous), yet invisible, or transparent.In practice, resolving the seeming paradox arising from the joint demands of ubiquity and transparency is less than simple.This paper documents a case study of attempting to do just that.We describe our experience in developing a working conference room which is equipped to support a broad class of meetings and media.After laying the groundwork and establishing the context in the Introduction, we describe the evolution of the room.Throughout, we attempt to document the rationale and motivation.While derived from a limited domain, we believe that the issues that arise are of general importance, and have strong implications on future research.

Article Bricks: laying the foundations for graspable user interfaces Share on Authors: George W. Fitzmaurice Dynamic Graphics Project, CSRI, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A4 Dynamic Graphics Project, CSRI, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A4View Profile , Hiroshi Ishii NTT Human Interface Lab, 1-2356 Take, Yokosuka-Shi, Kanagawa, 238-03 Japan NTT Human Interface Lab, 1-2356 Take, Yokosuka-Shi, Kanagawa, 238-03 JapanView Profile , William A. S. Buxton Dynamic Graphics Project, CSRI, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A4 and Alias Research Inc., 110 Richmond Street East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5C 1P1 Dynamic Graphics Project, CSRI, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A4 and Alias Research Inc., 110 Richmond Street East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5C 1P1View Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '95: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMay 1995 Pages 442–449https://doi.org/10.1145/223904.223964Online:01 May 1995Publication History 528citation5,214DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations528Total Downloads5,214Last 12 Months324Last 6 weeks32 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Article Transparent layered user interfaces: an evaluation of a display design to enhance focused and divided attention Share on Authors: Beverly L. Harrison Dept. of Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1A4 and Alias Research Ltd., 110 Richmond St. East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5C 1P1 Dept. of Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1A4 and Alias Research Ltd., 110 Richmond St. East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5C 1P1View Profile , Hiroshi Ishii NTT Human Interface Lab, 1-2356 Take, Yokosuka-Shi, Kanagawa, 238-03 Japan NTT Human Interface Lab, 1-2356 Take, Yokosuka-Shi, Kanagawa, 238-03 JapanView Profile , Kim J. Vicente Dept. of Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1A4 Dept. of Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1A4View Profile , William A. S. Buxton Alias Research Ltd., 110 Richmond St. East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5C 1P1 and Dept. of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1A4 Alias Research Ltd., 110 Richmond St. East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5C 1P1 and Dept. of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1A4View Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '95: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMay 1995 Pages 317–324https://doi.org/10.1145/223904.223945Online:01 May 1995Publication History 83citation2,496DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations83Total Downloads2,496Last 12 Months100Last 6 weeks9 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Article Free Access Share on The "prince" technique: Fitts' law and selection using area cursors Authors: Paul Kabbash View Profile , William A. S. Buxton View Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '95: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMay 1995 Pages 273–279https://doi.org/10.1145/223904.223939Published:01 May 1995Publication History 120citation1,017DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations120Total Downloads1,017Last 12 Months176Last 6 weeks18 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

No abstract available.

Article A taxonomy of see-through tools Share on Authors: Eric A. Bier Xerox PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CA Xerox PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CAView Profile , Maureen C. Stone Xerox PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CA Xerox PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CAView Profile , Ken Fishkin Xerox PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CA Xerox PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CAView Profile , William Buxton University of Toronto, CSRI, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5S 1A4 University of Toronto, CSRI, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5S 1A4View Profile , Thomas Baudel Université de Paris-Sud, LRI, 91 405 Orsay Cedex, France Université de Paris-Sud, LRI, 91 405 Orsay Cedex, FranceView Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '94: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsApril 1994 Pages 358–364https://doi.org/10.1145/191666.191786Online:24 April 1994Publication History 83citation1,192DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations83Total Downloads1,192Last 12 Months17Last 6 weeks5 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Article Two-handed input in a compound task Share on Authors: Paul Kabbash Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont., M5S 1A4, Canada Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont., M5S 1A4, CanadaView Profile , William Buxton Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont., M5S 1A4, Canada and Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CA Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont., M5S 1A4, Canada and Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CAView Profile , Abigail Sellen Rank Xerox EuroPARC, 61 Regent St., Cambridge, CB2 1AB, U.K and MRC Applied Psychology Unit, 15 Chaucer Rd., Cambridge, CB2 2EF, U.K. Rank Xerox EuroPARC, 61 Regent St., Cambridge, CB2 1AB, U.K and MRC Applied Psychology Unit, 15 Chaucer Rd., Cambridge, CB2 2EF, U.K.View Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '94: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsApril 1994 Pages 417–423https://doi.org/10.1145/191666.191808Online:24 April 1994Publication History 106citation1,523DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations106Total Downloads1,523Last 12 Months42Last 6 weeks3 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

A marking menu is designed to allow a user to perform a menu selection by either popping-up a radial (or pie) menu, or by making a straight mark in the direction of the desired menu item without popping-up the menu.Previous evaluations in laboratory settings have shown the potential of marking menus.This paper reports on a case study of user behavior with marking menus in a real work situation.The study demonstrates the following: First, marking menus are used as designed.When users become expert with the menus, marks are used extensively.However, the transition to using marks is not one way.Expert users still switch back to menus to refresh their memory of menu layout.Second, marking is an extremely efficient interaction technique.Using a mark on average was 3.5 times faster than selection using the menu.Finally, design principles can be followed that make menu item/mark associations easier to learn, and interaction efficient.

This study investigates dynamic 3D target acquisition.The focus is on the relative effect of specific perceptual cues.A novel technique is introduced and we report on an experiment that evaluates its effectiveness.There are two aspects to the new technique.First, in contrast to normal practice, the tracking symbol is a volume rather than a point.Second, the surface of this volume is semi-transparent, thereby affording occlusion cues during target acquisition.The experiment shows that the volumehcclusion cues were effective in both monocular and stereoscopic conditions.For some tasks where stereoscopic presentation is unavailable or infeasible, the new techniaue offers an effective alternative.

Abstract Drawing a mark can be an efficient command input technique when using a pen‐based computer. However, marks are not intrinsically self‐explanatory as are other interactive techniques such as buttons and menus. We present design principles for interaction mechanisms which make marks self explanatory for novices but still allow experts to use efficient command marks. The key notion is that use of the explanation mechanism physically trains a novice to use the efficient command marks. Two novel interaction mechanisms we have developed using these principles are presented.

An experiment is described which demonstrates that the point-drag sequence common on interactive systems can be modelled as two separate Fitts law tasks — a point-select task followed by a drag-select task. Strong prediction models were built; however, comparisons with previous models were not as close as the standard error coefficients implied. Caution is therefore warranted in follow-up applications of models built in research settings. Additionally, the previous claim that target height is the appropriate substitute for target width in calculating Fitts' index of difficulty in dragging tasks was not supported. The experiment described varied the dragging target's width and height independently. Models using the horizontal width of the drag target or the smaller of the target's width or height outperformed the target height model.

Toolglass™ widgets are new user interface tools that can appear, as though on a transparent sheet of glass, between an application and a traditional cursor.They can be positioned with one hand while the other positions the cursor.The widgets provide a rich and concise vocabulary for operating on application objects.These widgets may incorporate visual filters, called Magic Lens™ filters, that modify the presentation of application objects to reveal hidden information, to enhance data of interest, or to suppress distracting information.Together, these tools form a see-through interface that offers many advantages over traditional controls.They provide a new style of interaction that better exploits the user's everyday skills.They can reduce steps, cursor motion, and errors.Many widgets can be provided in a user interface, by designers and by users, without requiring dedicated screen space.In addition, lenses provide rich context-dependent feedback and the ability to view details and context simultaneously.Our widgets and lenses can be combined to form operation and viewing macros, and can be used over multiple applications.

We describe a system to support a particular model of document creation.In this model, the document flows from the primary author to one or more collaborators.They annotate it, then return it to the author who makes the final changes.Annotations are made using conventional marks, typically using a stylus.The intent is to match the flow and mark-up of paper documents observed in the everyday world, .The system is very much modeled on Wang FreeStyle (Perkins, Blatt, Workman and Ehrlich, 1989;Francik and Akagi, 1989; & Levine and Ehrlich, in press).Our contribution is to incorporate mark recognition into the system and to explore some novel navigation tools that are enabled by the higher-level data structures that we use.The system is described and the results of initial usertesting are reported.

We describe marking menus, an extension of pie menus, which are well suited for stylus-based interfaces. Pie menus are circular menus subdivided into sectors, each of which might correspond to a different command. One moves the cursor from the center of the pie into the desired sector. Marking menus are invisible pie menus in which the movement of the cursor during a selection leaves an "ink trail" similar to a pen stroke on paper. The combination of a pie menu and a marking menu supports an efficient transition from novice to expert performance. Novices can "pop-up" a pie menu and make a selection, whereas experts can simply make the corresponding mark without waiting for the menu to appear. This article describes an experiment in which we explored both articulatory and cognitive aspects of marking menus for different numbers of items per menu and using different input devices (mouse, trackball, and stylus). The articulatory aspects are how well subjects could execute the physical actions necessary to select from pie marking menus. Articulatory aspects were investigated by presenting one group of subjects with the task of selecting from fully visible menus. Because one feature of marking menus is that users should be able to select from them without seeing the menus (by making a mark), we also ran two groups of subjects with invisible pie menus: one group with an ink trail and one without. These subjects were therefore faced with the task of either mentally representing the menu or associating marks with the commands they invoked through practice. These then are the cognitive aspects to which we refer. Our results indicate that subjects' performance degraded as the number of items increased. When menus were hidden, however, subjects performance did not degrade as rapidly when menus contained even numbers of items. We also found subjects performed better with the mouse and stylus than with the trackball.

At EuroPARC, we have been exploring ways to allow physically separated colleagues to work together effectively and naturally. In this paper, we briefly discuss several examples of our work in the context of three themes that have emerged: the need to support the full range of shared work; the desire to ensure privacy without giving up unobtrusive awareness; and the possibility of creating systems which blur the boundaries between people, technologies and the everyday world.

Fitts' law, a one-dimensional model of human movement, is commonly applied to two-dimensional target acquisition tasks on interactive computing systems. For rectangular targets, such as words, it is demonstrated that the model can break down and yield unrealistically low (even negative!) ratings for a task's index of difficulty (ID). The Shannon formulation is shown to partially correct this problem, since ID is always ≥ 0 bits. As well, two alternative interpretations “target width” are introduced that accommodate the two-dimensional nature of tasks. Results of an experiment are presented that show a significant improvement in the model's performance using the suggested changes.

No abstract available.

The use of different kinds of feedback in preventing mode errors was investigated. Two experiments examined the frequency of mode errors in a text-editing task where a mode error was defined as an attempt to issue navigation commands while in insert mode, or an attempt to insert text while in command mode. In Experiment 1, the effectiveness of kinesthetic versus visual feedback was compared in four different conditions: the use of keyboard versus foot pedal for changing mode (kinesthetic feedback), crossed with the presence or absence of visual feedback to indicate mode. The results showed both kinesthetic and visual feedback to be effective in reducing mode errors. However, kinesthetic was more effective than visual feedback both in terms of reducing errors and in terms of reducing the cognitive load associated with mode changes. Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that the superiority of this kinesthetic feedback was due to the fact that the foot pedal required subjects actively to maintain insert mode. The results confirmed that the use of a nonlatching foot pedal for switching modes provided a more salient source of information on mode state than the use of a latching pedal. On the basis of these results, we argue that user-maintained mode states prevent mode errors more effectively than system-maintained mode states.

No abstract available.

An experiment is described comparing three devices (a mouse, a trackball, and a stylus with tablet) in the performance of pointing and dragging tasks.During pointing, movement times were shorter and error rates were lower than during dragging.It is shown that Fitts' law can model both tasks, and that within devices the index of performance is higher when pointing than when dragging.Device differences also appeared.The stylus displayed a higher rate of information pmeessing than the mouse during pointing but not during dragging.The trackball ranked third for both tasks,

A media space is a system that uses integrated video, audio, and computers to aHow individuals and groups to work together despite being distributed spatially and temporally. Our media space, CAVECAT (Computer Audio Video Enhanced Collaboration And Telepresence), enables a small number of individuals or groups located in separate offices to engage in collaborative work without leaving their offices. This paper presents and summarizes our experiences during initial use of CAVECAT, including unsolved technological obstacles we have encountered, and the psychological and social impact of the technology. Where possible we discuss relevant findings from the psychological literature, and implications for design of the next-generation media space.

The direct manipulation paradigm has been effective in helping designers create easy to use mouse and keyboard based interfaces.The development of flat display surfaces and transparent tablets are now making possible interfaces where a user can write directly on the screen using a special stylus.The intention of these types of interfaces is to exploit user's existing handwriting, mark-up and drawing skills while also providing the benefits of direct manipulation.This paper reports on a test bed program which we are using for exploring hand-marking types of interactions and their integration with direct manipulation interactions.

The title of this panel immediately leaps out as being out of place. Of all the things that come to mind when one thinks of computers and user interfaces, drama and personality are among the last. The point here is not to make using computers more dramatic, per se, but to learn and borrow from the performing arts about techniques that could improve main stream interface design. The contributions described in this panel are borrowed from the theatrical world, film producing and music. In all the panelists work, the user is at the very center of creating the actual user interface experience, either through direct user participation or via engaging the individual viewer's personality. The panelists' pioneering research has produced and created several examples of new user interface experiences and designs. The discussion will focus on what techniques offer the most promise for facilitating the design of really new experiential user interfaces.

Article The computer as musical accompanist Share on Authors: W. Buxton Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A4 Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A4View Profile , R. Dannenberg Computer Science Department, 4212 Wean Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Computer Science Department, 4212 Wean Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaView Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '86: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsApril 1986 Pages 41–43https://doi.org/10.1145/22627.22346Published:01 April 1986 4citation366DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations4Total Downloads366Last 12 Months12Last 6 weeks0 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Two experiments were run to investigate two-handed input. The experimental tasks were representative of those found in CAD and office information systems.

Much of the work in the field of computer human interaction consists of finding out what is wrong with existing interfaces or which of several existing alternatives is better. Over the next few decades, the possibilities for computer human interaction will explode. This will be due to: 1) continued decrease in the costs of processing and memory, 2) new technologies being invented and existing technologies (e.g., handwriting recognition, speech synthesis) being extended, 3) new applications and 4) new ideas about how people can interact with computers.

It is very time-consuming and expensive to create the graphical, highly-interactive styles of user interfaces that are increasingly common. User Interface Management Systems (UIMSs) attempt to make the creation of user interfaces easier, but most existing UIMSs cannot create the low-level interaction techniques (pop-up pull-down and fixed menus, on-screen "light buttons", scroll-bars, elaborate feedback mechanisms and animations, etc.) that are frequently used. This paper describes Peridot, a system that automatically creates the code for these user interfaces while the designer demonstrates to the system how the interface should look and work. Peridot uses rule-based inferencing so no programming by the designer is required, and Direct Manipulation techniques are used to create Direct Manipulation interfaces, which can make full use of a mouse and other input devices. This allows extremely rapid prototyping of user interfaces.

The Communicating with Sound panel for CHI '85 will focus on ways of expanding the user interface by using sound as a significant means of output. As a user's communication from the computer has progressed from large (and often smeary) printout to a teletypewriter and, finally, to the multi-window workstation displays of today, the emphasis has remained primarily on visual output. Although many user terminals and workstations have the capability of generating sound, that capability is rarely used for more than audio cues (indicating status such as an error condition or task completion) and simple musical tunes. Research shows that sounds convey meaningful information to users. With examples of such research, the panel members will demonstrate a variety of uses of sound output, discuss issues raised by the work, and suggest further directions. The intent of the panel is to stimulate thinking about expanding the user interface and to discuss areas for future research.

A prototype touch-sensitive tablet is presented. The tablet's main innovation is that it is capable of sensing more than one point of contact at a time. In addition to being able to provide position coordinates, the tablet also gives a measure of degree of contact, independently for each point of contact. In order to enable multi-touch sensing, the tablet surface is divided into a grid of discrete points. The points are scanned using a recursive area subdivision algorithm. In order to minimize the resolution lost due to the discrete nature of the grid, a novel interpolation scheme has been developed. Finally, the paper briefly discusses how multi-touch sensing, interpolation, and degree of contact sensing can be combined to expand our vocabulary in human-computer interaction.

Touch-sensitive tablets and their use in human-computer interaction are discussed. It is shown that such devices have some important properties that differentiate them from other input devices (such as mice and joysticks). The analysis serves two purposes: (1) it sheds light on touch tablets, and (2) it demonstrates how other devices might be approached. Three specific distinctions between touch tablets and one button mice are drawn. These concern the signaling of events, multiple point sensing and the use of templates. These distinctions are reinforced, and possible uses of touch tablets are illustrated, in an example application. Potential enhancements to touch tablets and other input devices are discussed, as are some inherent problems. The paper concludes with recommendations for future work.

A UIMS developed at the University of Toronto is presented. The system has two main components. The first is a set of tools to support the design and implementation of interactive graphics programs. The second is a run-time support package which handles interactions between the system and the user (things such as hit detection, event detection, screen updates, and procedure invocation), and provides facilities for logging user interactions for later protocol analysis. The design / implementation tool is a preprocessor, called MENULAY, which permits the applications programmer to use interactive graphics techniques to design graphics menus and their functionality. The output of this preprocessor is high- level code which can be compiled with application-specific routines. User interactions with the resulting executable module are then handled by the run-time support package. The presentation works through an example from design to execution in a step-by-step manner