Effects of See Through Interfaces on User Acceptance of Small Screen Information Systems

Small-screen devices such as mobile phones are increasingly pervasive. Reduced screen areas compromise the ease-of-use of such devices, and consequently, a concern for system designers becomes the maximization of available screen space. On large-screen displays, menus can overlap and obscure others, and be displayed simultaneously to the user. This is generally not the case with small screens: where a user selects from an on-screen menu, that menu must ‘vacate’ the screen before another appears. Menu translucency, where a user can see through an on-screen menu to displayed elements beneath, is a possible solution to small-screen display maximization. Based on experimental evidence with 70 participants, and using an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) this research examines the effect of on-screen translucent menus on perceptions of ease-ofuse, usefulness, and enjoyment for a third generation mobile phone prototype user interface. We offer explanations for our findings and discuss implications for practitioners and researchers

A new modeling interface for the pen-input displays

Abstract Sketch interactions based on interpreting multiple pen markings into a 3D shape is easy to design but not to use. First of all, it is difficult for the user to memorize a complete set of pen markings for a certain 3D shape. Secondly, the system will be waiting for the user to complete the sequence of the pen markings, often causing a certain mode error. To address these problems, we present a novel, interaction framework, suitable for interpretations based on single-stroke marking on pen-input display; within this framework 3D shape modeling operations are designed to create appropriate communication protocols.

Parallel processing interfaces to television

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1995.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 76).by Frank Kao.M.S

Freeform User Interfaces for Graphical Computing

報告番号: 甲15222 ; 学位授与年月日: 2000-03-29 ; 学位の種別: 課程博士 ; 学位の種類: 博士(工学) ; 学位記番号: 博工第4717号 ; 研究科・専攻: 工学系研究科情報工学専

Digital Alchemy: Matter and Metamorphosis in Contemporary Digital Animation and Interface Design

The recent proliferation of special effects in Hollywood film has ushered in an era of digital transformation. Among scholars, digital technology is hailed as a revolutionary moment in the history of communication and representation. Nevertheless, media scholars and cultural historians have difficulty finding a language adequate to theorizing digital artifacts because they are not just texts to be deciphered. Rather, digital media artifacts also invite critiques about the status of reality because they resurrect ancient problems of embodiment and transcendence.In contrast to scholarly approaches to digital technology, computer engineers, interface designers, and special effects producers have invented a robust set of terms and phrases to describe the practice of digital animation. In order to address this disconnect between producers of new media and scholars of new media, I argue that the process of digital animation borrows extensively from a set of preexisting terms describing materiality that were prominent for centuries prior to the scientific revolution. Specifically, digital animators and interface designers make use of the ancient science, art, and technological craft of alchemy. Both alchemy and digital animation share several fundamental elements: both boast the power of being able to transform one material, substance, or thing into a different material, substance, or thing. Both seek to transcend the body and materiality but in the process, find that this elusive goal (realism and gold) is forever receding onto the horizon.The introduction begins with a literature review of the field of digital media studies. It identifies a gap in the field concerning disparate arguments about new media technology. On the one hand, scholars argue that new technologies like cyberspace and digital technology enable radical new forms of engagement with media on individual, social, and economic levels. At the same time that media scholars assert that our current epoch is marked by a historical rupture, many other researchers claim that new media are increasingly characterized by ancient metaphysical problems like embodiment and transcendence. In subsequent chapters I investigate this disparity

Retracing Spatial Design Processes: Developing a Pedagogical Tool for Architecture

Over the recent decades, contemporary architecture and its design processes have witnessed rapid digitization - owing to the advent of Computer-Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) tools. However, these tools for the architectural discipline have yet to holistically accommodate the intuitive, “messy” and collaborative nature of its ideation processes. These creative processes of architecture students and novice practitioners have either been flattened or neglected while enforcing conventional CAAD tools with inflexible interfaces. However, students can benefit from experiential learning in design studios with tools that support and facilitate their reflective design processes. These tools could intuitively assist in brainstorming design concepts from inspirational stimuli while simultaneously documenting these thought processes and ideas through interactive design databases. Hence, given the continued adaptation of the architecture discipline with digital design strategies, tools that help in dynamically recording and tracing the evolution of design thinking and making processes can help better validate and reflect on their corresponding conceptual designs. This research is an investigation into the ongoing gap in the interactive documentation of the ideation processes in architecture education such that they could promote reflective design learning among architecture students while generating ideas for the built. This gap is attributed to the various challenges and limitations of existing CAAD tools such as the rigidity of their interfaces and lack of holistic support for collaborative design works. The research explores a digital design tool for students and novice practitioners that has the ability: (1) to record and trace the concepts and design ideas generated during creative brainstorming sessions, (2) to provoke reflective design thinking and making through proposed design modes and, (3) to facilitate collective contribution to these designs. Through experimentation with these criteria, the proposed tool is investigated for its potential to bridge the gap in reflectively communicating and collaborating on design proposals during the conceptual design phases in architecture education and practice

Sketching and visual perception in conceptual design : case studies of novice and expert architecture students.

This research is concerned with conceptual sketches, visual perception and verbal description. Firstly, it focuses on the role of sketching in conceptual design and begins to question why conceptual sketches are considered a good medium for reflective conversation with one's own ideas and imagery. Secondly, it focuses exclusively on the mental process involved in the analysis and verbal description of conceptual sketches. The empirical study examines how novice and expert designers might perceive different things from the same conceptual sketch and thus use different verbal descriptions, and what this might reveal about their different approaches to design. For this reason some experiments on visual perception, conceptual sketches and verbal description were conducted with expert and novice architecture students. The main objective is to verify to what extent the use of formal references such as line, square or circle and symbolic references such as describing a circle as a sun or a long oval as a sausage, help to understand how designers might think with sketches, while searching for a specific design solution. It also investigates which of the two types of images (non-architectural and architectural sketches) present greater potential for allowing the use of formal and symbolic verbal references, and why. The results show that, on average, the expert group used more formal and symbolic verbal references per minute than novices while describing the same images. The results also show that the non-architectural sketch was judged as easier to describe than the architectural one and gave rise to the use of more symbolic references. This can be seen to confirm earlier work suggesting that we fmd symbolic descriptions easier and more powerful than formal ones. The results also suggest that the expert students were more able to employ symbolic references to architectural concepts than novice students. However, in many other respects there were few differences between the groups. This may in part be due to the limitations of the empirical methodology employed