Interactive Layout Drawing Interface with Shadow Guidance

It is difficult to design a visually appealing layout for common users, which takes time even for professional designers. In this paper, we present an interactive layout design system with shadow guidance and layout retrieval to help users obtain satisfactory design results. This study focuses in particular on the design of academic presentation slides. The user may refer to the shadow guidance as a heat map, which is the layout distribution of our gathered data set, using the suggested shadow guidance. The suggested system is data-driven, allowing users to analyze the design data naturally. The layout may then be edited by the user to finalize the layout design. We validated the suggested interface in our user study by comparing it with common design interfaces. The findings show that the suggested interface may achieve high retrieval accuracy while simultaneously offering a pleasant user experience.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, accepted in IWAIT2023, video is here https://youtu.be/Rddjz5jloJ

An interactive layout exploration and optimisation method for early stage ship design

This paper presents a novel, highly interactive genetic algorithm-based layout exploration and optimisation method for generating spatial configurations of ships in the early stages of the design process. The method draws upon the principles of design-driven architecturally centred ship design processes by enabling the naval architects to make important decisions in a hybrid design process. The method utilises a genetic algorithm-based optimisation tool to rapidly generate and evaluate a diverse set of general arrangement options. It is approached in stages where each stage comprises two steps (manual and automatic). The new genetic algorithm-based layout optimisation tool is demonstrated by being applied to an Offshore Patrol Vessel test case. The advantages and disadvantages of the proposed tool are discussed, as well as the current limitations of the overall approach and future work

TopExNet: Entity-Centric Network Topic Exploration in News Streams

The recent introduction of entity-centric implicit network representations of unstructured text offers novel ways for exploring entity relations in document collections and streams efficiently and interactively. Here, we present TopExNet as a tool for exploring entity-centric network topics in streams of news articles. The application is available as a web service at https://topexnet.ifi.uni-heidelberg.de/ .Comment: Published in Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining, WSDM 2019, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, February 11-15, 201

Interactive constraint-based space layout planning

Layout planning is the primordial design activity that determines the characteristics and performance of a building throughout its lifecycle. Due to its iterative nature, there is a growing interest in the automation of space layout planning to enhance the search for optimum design solutions. The approaches for automation range from constraint/heuristics-based to the application of numerical optimisation algorithms. Among these, the use of design constraints to guide the search of the solution space is well regarded due to its ability to model design problems of an applied nature with multiple objectives. Constraint-based approaches also allow interactivity between the designer and layout planning process, which simulates the iterative nature of creative design and can be integrated well with the existing design process. Interactivity also enhances the management of design knowledge through improved processing and visualisation of information. This paper presents a theoretical framework for interactive constraint-based layout optimisation with an implemented prototype for a hospital patient room interior layout. The theoretical framework was developed by analysing existing layout automation methods and interactive approaches through a review of relevant literature. Object-oriented computer programming was used to develop the prototype to demonstrate the proposed approach of interactive layout planning system. The framework augments the iterative design process by facilitating the active participation and sharing of the designer’s knowledge during the aggregation. With regard to the implementation of the framework in large problems, fast evaluation of design solution was found to be necessary to interact with the system in real time. Interactive constraint-based layout optimisation has, therefore, the ability to enhance the search process of optimum design solutions by augmenting the iterative nature of the creative design process

Visualizing Object Oriented Software in Three Dimensions

There is increasing evidence that it is possible to perceive and understand increasingly comple x information systems if they are displayed a s graphical objects in a three dimensional space . Object-oriented software provides an interestin g test case - there is a natural mapping fro m software objects to visual objects . In this paper we explore two areas. 1) Information perception : we are running controlled experiments to determine empirically if our initial premise is valid; how much more (or less) can be understoo d in 3D than in 2D? 2) Layout: our strategy is to combine partially automatic layout with manua l layout. This paper presents a brief overview of the project, the software architecture and some preliminary empirical results

Improved Compact Visibility Representation of Planar Graph via Schnyder's Realizer

Let $G$ be an $n$-node planar graph. In a visibility representation of $G$, each node of $G$ is represented by a horizontal line segment such that the line segments representing any two adjacent nodes of $G$ are vertically visible to each other. In the present paper we give the best known compact visibility representation of $G$. Given a canonical ordering of the triangulated $G$, our algorithm draws the graph incrementally in a greedy manner. We show that one of three canonical orderings obtained from Schnyder's realizer for the triangulated $G$ yields a visibility representation of $G$ no wider than $\frac{22n-40}{15}$. Our easy-to-implement O(n)-time algorithm bypasses the complicated subroutines for four-connected components and four-block trees required by the best previously known algorithm of Kant. Our result provides a negative answer to Kant's open question about whether $\frac{3n-6}{2}$ is a worst-case lower bound on the required width. Also, if $G$ has no degree-three (respectively, degree-five) internal node, then our visibility representation for $G$ is no wider than $\frac{4n-9}{3}$ (respectively, $\frac{4n-7}{3}$). Moreover, if $G$ is four-connected, then our visibility representation for $G$ is no wider than $n-1$, matching the best known result of Kant and He. As a by-product, we obtain a much simpler proof for a corollary of Wagner's Theorem on realizers, due to Bonichon, Sa\"{e}c, and Mosbah.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, the preliminary version of this paper is to appear in Proceedings of the 20th Annual Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS), Berlin, Germany, 200

Stress-Minimizing Orthogonal Layout of Data Flow Diagrams with Ports

We present a fundamentally different approach to orthogonal layout of data flow diagrams with ports. This is based on extending constrained stress majorization to cater for ports and flow layout. Because we are minimizing stress we are able to better display global structure, as measured by several criteria such as stress, edge-length variance, and aspect ratio. Compared to the layered approach, our layouts tend to exhibit symmetries, and eliminate inter-layer whitespace, making the diagrams more compact

Understanding the Human-Computer Interface Requirements in Developing Applications for Children

The impact of technology on children is said to be very crucial in this era, so every single issues are needed to take into consideration on designing an interactive layout of design for children. This research focuses on understanding the design needed for children’s applications in terms of perception, memory, symbolic representation, problem solving and language. The definition of children used in this research is broad rather than narrow, it can include toddlers and teenagers but the core work of this survey focuses on children in primary schools. However, children at preoperational stage which are at the age of 2 to7 are the main target for this research. A simple testing process was conducted with children in order to understand the current situation related to interactive design on mobile software applications. This research concludes by congesting all the guidelines relating to interactive design and human computer interaction on children, extract the methods testing which are conducted with children and come out with recommendations to improve the current design for children’s mobile software applications. Keywords: Children & HCI, Software Requirements, Interactive desig