Zoomable User Interfaces for the Authoring and Delivery of Slide Presentations

Millions of slide presentations are being authored and delivered with computer software every day. Yet much of the computer's power for these tasks remains untapped. Existing interaction techniques leave presenters wrestling with limited size computer displays to get meaningful overviews of their work. Without these overviews, they have trouble finding patterns in their data and experimenting with alternate organizations. They also have difficulty communicating the structure of large or complex talks to the audience and keeping the audience oriented during unexpected transitions between ideas. A natural solution is Zoomable User Interfaces (ZUIs) since they offer the capability to view information at multiple levels of detail and smoothly transition between ideas. This work presents two ZUIs, Niagara and CounterPoint, for authoring and delivering slide presentations. Niagara is a ZUI workspace for authoring presentation content with techniques to improve authoring in the zoomable environment. Empirical evaluations of ZUI-based authoring tools revealed performance improvements and subjective preferences over folder-based interfaces for organization tasks. Users were 30% faster with ZUIs than with folders in completing a simplified shape organization task. Some classes of users were also faster with ZUIs than with folders in completing a text-based organization task. Users performing both tasks exhibited a strong preference for ZUIs over folders. CounterPoint provides a number of features to simplify the creation and delivery of ZUI presentations. The effects of these presentations on the audience were evaluated in a controlled comparison of presentations with slides only, slides with spatial layouts, and slides with spatial layouts and animation. The study revealed a strong subjective preference and higher ratings of organization for presentations with spatial layout. Feedback was also gathered from presenters who used CounterPoint to deliver over 100 real-world presentations. They indicated that CounterPoint helped them communicate overviews and multi-level presentation structures. More experienced CounterPoint presenters also found that CounterPoint helped them keep the audience oriented when navigating the presentation in response to audience feedback

Presentation in Free-Form Space: Managing Ambiguity with Hypermedia Pathways While Supporting Ideation

Traditional Slideware presentation tools (e.g. PowerPoint) suffer from the problem of premature formalism, which interferes with how authors develop new knowledge. Free-form spatial content organization can overcome this problem, by allowing users to express multiple, emerging relationships among content elements. Although its ambiguity fosters interpretation of relationships for both authors and audiences, the ambiguity will make presentation more challenging to perform. Therefore, we integrated hypermedia pathways with a free-form space to support presentations. We conducted a field study, addressing 158 users to understand authors’ experiences of creating content in free-form space, integrated with hypermedia pathways for presentation. Our findings show that this integration supports users in not only developing new ideas, but also in performing the presentations

SlideSpace: Heuristic design of a hybrid presentation medium

The Slide and Canvas metaphors are two ways of helping people create visual aids for oral presentations. Although such physical metaphors help both authors and audiences make sense of material, they also constrain authoring in ways that can negatively impact presentation delivery. In this article, we derive heuristics for the design of presentation media that are independent of any underlying physical metaphors. We use these heuristics to craft a new kind of presentation medium called SlideSpace-one that combines hierarchical outlines, content collections, and design rules to automate the real-time, outline-driven synthesis of hybrid Slide-Canvas visuals. Through a qualitative study of SlideSpace use, we validate our heuristics and demonstrate that such a hybrid presentation medium can combine the advantages of existing systems while mitigating their drawbacks. Overall, we show how a heuristic design approach helped us challenge entrenched physical metaphors to create a fundamentally digital presentation medium with the potential to transform the activities of authoring, delivering, and viewing presentations

A Study on Structural and Semantic Analysis for Presentation Content Management

兵庫県立大学大学院201

Effective Vocabulary Learning in Multimedia CALL Environments: Psychological Evidence

A wide range of technologies are now applied in the field of second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. Nevertheless, intentional language-focused vocabulary CALL software has not been proven to effectively operationalise working memory. The research presented in this thesis contributes to the existing literature by identifying coding features from cutting-edge multimedia technologies that relate to L2 learning and memory research. The study participants were fifty undergraduate students from the University of York, UK. Their individual differences and memory abilities were assessed using the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA). Initially, the participants were exposed to L2 novel words via the Computer-Assisted Vocabulary Acquisition software (CAVA) via three interactive interfaces: a verbal-based menu driven interface (L2-L1: MDI), a visual-based graphical user interface (L2-Picture: GUI) and a visuospatial-based zoomable user interface (L2-Context: ZUI), and immediate and delayed post-tests conducted. The first study results revealed that ZUI correlated significantly with AWMA, tending to be the most effective multimedia learning method in the immediate post-test, compared with GUI and MDI. However, in the delayed post-test, ZUI’s effect experienced a dramatic decline, while GUI tended to be the most effective. In the second study, the participants were exposed to a second version of CAVA. Their accuracy and response times during the translation recognition task were measured and analysed, as were their pupillary responses. The findings revealed the participants were significantly more accurate and faster when judging the No translation pairs than the Yes ones. Of the multimedia representations, responses to MDI words were achieved significantly faster and more accurately than to GUI and ZUI words. Moreover, those participants with high verbal short-term memories were significantly faster and more accurate, experiencing a relatively reduced pupil size

Adaptive Layout for Interactive Documents

This thesis presents a novel approach to create automated layouts for rich illustrative material that could adapt according to the screen size and contextual requirements. The adaption not only considers global layout but also deals with the content and layout adaptation of individual illustrations in the layout. An unique solution has been developed that integrates constraint-based and force-directed techniques to create adaptive grid-based and non-grid layouts. A set of annotation layouts are developed which adapt the annotated illustrations to match the contextual requirements over time

Putting trajectories to work: translating a HCI framework into design practice

One major challenge for the academic Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research community is the adoption of its findings and theoretical output by the interaction design practitioners whose work they are meant to support. To address this “research-practice gap”, this thesis takes the example of trajectories, a HCI conceptual framework derived from studies of mixed-reality performances spanning complex spaces, timeframes, participant roles, and interface ecologies. Trajectories’ authors have called for their work to be used to inform the design of a broader variety of experiences. This thesis explores what is required to fulfil this ambition, with a specific focus on using the framework to improve the experience of live events, and on professional design practitioners as the users of the framework. This exploration follows multiple approaches, led both by researchers and practitioners. This thesis starts by reviewing past uses of the trajectories framework – including for design purposes – and by discussing work that has previously tried to bridge the research-practice gap. In a first series of studies, the thesis identifies live events – such as music festivals and running races – as a rich setting where trajectories may be used both to study existing experiences and to design new ones. This leads to a series of design guidelines grounded both in knowledge about the setting and in trajectories. The thesis then discusses multiple approaches through which HCI researchers and practitioners at a large media company have joined forces to try to use trajectories in industrial design and production processes. Finally, the last strand of work returns to live events, with a two-year long Research through Design study in which trajectories have been used to improve the experience of a local music festival and to develop a mobile app to support it. This last study provides first-hand insight into the integration of theoretical concerns into design. This thesis provides three major classes of contributions. First, extensions to the original trajectories framework, which include refined definitions for the set of concepts that the framework comprises, as well as considerations for open-ended experiences where control is shared between stakeholders and participants. Secondly, a model describing the use of trajectories throughout design and production processes offers a blueprint for practitioners willing to use the framework. Finally, a discussion on the different ways trajectories have been translated into practice leads to proposing a model for locating translations of HCI knowledge with regards to the gap between academic research and design practice, and the gap between theoretical knowledge and design artefacts

Putting trajectories to work: translating a HCI framework into design practice

One major challenge for the academic Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research community is the adoption of its findings and theoretical output by the interaction design practitioners whose work they are meant to support. To address this “research-practice gap”, this thesis takes the example of trajectories, a HCI conceptual framework derived from studies of mixed-reality performances spanning complex spaces, timeframes, participant roles, and interface ecologies. Trajectories’ authors have called for their work to be used to inform the design of a broader variety of experiences. This thesis explores what is required to fulfil this ambition, with a specific focus on using the framework to improve the experience of live events, and on professional design practitioners as the users of the framework. This exploration follows multiple approaches, led both by researchers and practitioners. This thesis starts by reviewing past uses of the trajectories framework – including for design purposes – and by discussing work that has previously tried to bridge the research-practice gap. In a first series of studies, the thesis identifies live events – such as music festivals and running races – as a rich setting where trajectories may be used both to study existing experiences and to design new ones. This leads to a series of design guidelines grounded both in knowledge about the setting and in trajectories. The thesis then discusses multiple approaches through which HCI researchers and practitioners at a large media company have joined forces to try to use trajectories in industrial design and production processes. Finally, the last strand of work returns to live events, with a two-year long Research through Design study in which trajectories have been used to improve the experience of a local music festival and to develop a mobile app to support it. This last study provides first-hand insight into the integration of theoretical concerns into design. This thesis provides three major classes of contributions. First, extensions to the original trajectories framework, which include refined definitions for the set of concepts that the framework comprises, as well as considerations for open-ended experiences where control is shared between stakeholders and participants. Secondly, a model describing the use of trajectories throughout design and production processes offers a blueprint for practitioners willing to use the framework. Finally, a discussion on the different ways trajectories have been translated into practice leads to proposing a model for locating translations of HCI knowledge with regards to the gap between academic research and design practice, and the gap between theoretical knowledge and design artefacts

Model-Driven Development of Interactive Multimedia Applications

The development of highly interactive multimedia applications is still a challenging and complex task. In addition to the application logic, multimedia applications typically provide a sophisticated user interface with integrated media objects. As a consequence, the development process involves different experts for software design, user interface design, and media design. There is still a lack of concepts for a systematic development which integrates these aspects. This thesis provides a model-driven development approach addressing this problem. Therefore it introduces the Multimedia Modeling Language (MML), a visual modeling language supporting a design phase in multimedia application development. The language is oriented on well-established software engineering concepts, like UML 2, and integrates concepts from the areas of multimedia development and model-based user interface development. MML allows the generation of code skeletons from the models. Thereby, the core idea is to generate code skeletons which can be directly processed in multimedia authoring tools. In this way, the strengths of both are combined: Authoring tools are used to perform the creative development tasks while models are used to design the overall application structure and to enable a well-coordinated development process. This is demonstrated using the professional authoring tool Adobe Flash. MML is supported by modeling and code generation tools which have been used to validate the approach over several years in various student projects and teaching courses. Additional prototypes have been developed to demonstrate, e.g., the ability to generate code for different target platforms. Finally, it is discussed how models can contribute in general to a better integration of well-structured software development and creative visual design

An authoring tool for generalised scenario creation for SignSupport

Magister Scientiae - MSc (Computer Science)This thesis describes the development cycles of an authoring tool that generalises scenario creation for SignSupport. SignSupport is a mobile communication tool for Deaf people that currently runs on an Android smartphone. The authoring tool is computer-based software that helps a domain expert, with little or no programming skills, design and populate a limited domain conversation scenario between a Deaf person and a hearing person, e.g., when a Deaf patient collects medication at a hospital pharmacy or when a Deaf learner is taking a computer literacy course. SignSupport provides instructions to the Deaf person in signed language videos on a mobile device. The authoring tool enables the creation and population of such scenarios on a computer for subsequent 'playback' on a mobile device. The output of this authoring tool is an XML script, alongside a repository of media les that can be used to render the SignSupport mobile app on any platform. Our concern was to iteratively develop the user interface for the authoring tool, focusing on the domain experts who create the overall flow and content for a given scenario. We had four development iterations, where the rst three were evaluated for usability; for both pharmacy and ICDL course scenarios with purposive sampling. The fourth iteration focused on using the authoring tool to design an ICDL practise mobile app, recording the necessary SASL videos and using an XML parser to render the designs XML script into an Android app. The research conducted herein leveraged multiple approaches to content authoring and generalisation; and further that software generalisation can improve accessibility and a ordability for the ultimate end users. The thesis concludes with a summary of recommendations and lessons learnt