Investigating Performance and Usage of Input Methods for Soft Keyboard Hotkeys

Touch-based devices, despite their mainstream availability, do not support a unified and efficient command selection mechanism, available on every platform and application. We advocate that hotkeys, conventionally used as a shortcut mechanism on desktop computers, could be generalized as a command selection mechanism for touch-based devices, even for keyboard-less applications. In this paper, we investigate the performance and usage of soft keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys (abbreviated SoftCuts) through two studies comparing different input methods across sitting, standing and walking conditions. Our results suggest that SoftCuts not only are appreciated by participants but also support rapid command selection with different devices and hand configurations. We also did not find evidence that walking deters their performance when using the Once input method.Comment: 17+2 pages, published at Mobile HCI 202

What do U-Note? An Augmented Note Taking System for the Classroom

International audienceWe present U-Note, a new system that helps children to study their lessons. It links a paper notebook and digital doc- uments in order to reconstruct the context of the class. This system makes it possible for students to browse the teacher's documents at the state it was when he wrote the words he is currently reading. The student can also add information he found on internet. We first discuss the interviews we had with teachers, that led to the design of the system. Then we describe the system itself, which consists of a capture sys- tem, and a browsing application

CtrlMouse et TouchCtrl : Dupliquer les Délimiteurs de Mode sur la Souris

National audienceModifier keys of the keyboard such as Ctrl or Cmd are used to delimit text entry and command selection (keyboard shortcuts). In this paper we study the impact of the position of these modifier keys on performance and muscular load by duplicating them on the mouse. We derive two interaction techniques: CtrlMouse duplicates the Ctrl and Shift keys by associating them to the mouse buttons under the thumb; TouchCtrl automatically triggers the Ctrl key when the hand lays on the mouse. Two laboratory experiments reveal that 1) as the task requires more pointing, participants use more these techniques, 2) the temporal cost of the use of modifier keys on command selection is 0.21s, which represents 11.9% of pointing time, and 3) selection time with CtrlMouse with one or two modifiers is similar. We also deployed these techniques to ecologically validate the results we obtained in the laboratory. Finally we present several application scenarios based on CtrlMouse and TouchCtrl.Les touches modifieur du clavier comme Ctrl ou Cmd sont utilisées pour délimiter l'entrée de texte de la sélection de commandes (raccourcis claviers). \ \ Dans cet article nous étudions l'impact de la localisation de ces délimiteurs sur la performance et la charge musculaire en les dupliquant sur la souris. À cet effet, nous dérivons deux techniques d'interaction : CtrlMouse duplique les touches Ctrl et Shift en les associant aux boutons de la souris sous le pouce; TouchCtrl déclenche automatiquement la touche Ctrl lorsque la main est posée sur la souris. Deux expériences en laboratoire révèlent 1) que ces techniques sont d'autant plus adoptées par les utilisateurs que la tâche demande du pointage, 2) le coût temporel des modifieurs sur la sélection de commandes est de 0,21s, ce qui correspond à 11,9% du temps de pointage et 3) le temps de sélection avec CtrlMouse avec un ou deux modifieurs est similaire. Nous avons également déployé ces techniques pour valider de manière écologique les résultats obtenus lors des évaluations en laboratoire. Enfin, nous présentons différents scénarios applicatifs élaborés à partir de CtrlMouse et TouchCtrl

Réduire l'Aversion aux Erreurs pour Aider la Transition Novice-Expert avec Fast Tap

National audienceExpert interaction techniques such as gestures or hotkeys are more efficient than traditional WIMP techniques because it is often faster to recall a command than to navigate to it. However, many users seem to be reluctant to switch to expert interaction. We hypothesize the cause might be the aversion of making errors. To test this, we designed two intermediate modes for the FastTap interaction technique, allowing quick confirmation of what the user has retrieved from memory, and quick adjustment if she has made an error. We investigated the impact of these modes and of various error costs in a controlled study (N=36). We found that participants adopted the intermediate modes, that these modes reduced error rate when error cost was high, and that they did not substantially change selection times. However, while it validates the design of our intermediate modes, we found no evidence of greater switch to memory-based interaction, suggesting that reducing the error rate is not sufficient to promote expert use of techniques.Les techniques d'interaction expertes comme les vocabulaires gestuels ou les raccourcis clavier sont plus efficaces que les techniques WIMP traditionnelles. Il est en effet plus rapide de se rappeler une commande plutôt que de la retrouver dans des menus. Cependant, la plupart des utilisateurs semblent réticents à passer aux interactions qui se basent sur leur mémoire. Nous pensons que la cause pourrait être due à leur aversion à faire des erreurs. Pour tester cette hypothèse, nous avons conçu deux modes intermédiaires pour la technique d'interaction FastTap, qui permet de rapidement confirmer ce que l'utilisateur s'est rappelé de mémoire, et d'ajuster si une erreur a été faite. Nous avons étudié l'impact de ces deux modes intermédiaires et de différents coûts d'erreur dans une étude contrôlée (N=36). Nous avons trouvé que les participants ont adopté les modes intermédiaires, que ces modes réduisaient le taux d'erreur quand le coût de l'erreur était important, et qu'ils n'ont pas affecté de manière significative les temps de sélection. Cependant, bien que les résultats valident la conception de nos modes intermédiaires, nous n'avons pas trouvé de preuve sur un plus grand passage aux interactions qui se basent sur la mémoire. Cela suggère que réduire le taux d'erreur n'est pas suffisant pour promouvoir l'utilisation experte des techniques

Awareness, Usage and Discovery of Swipe-revealed Hidden Widgets in iOS

International audienceRevealing a hidden widget with a dedicated sliding gesture is a common interaction design in today's handheld devices. Such "Swhidgets" (for swipe-revealed hidden widgets) provide a fast (and sometime unique) access to some commands. Interestingly, swhidgets do not follow conventional design guidelines in that they have no explicit signifiers, and users have to discover their existence before being able to use them. In this paper, we discuss the benefits of this signifierless design and investigate how iOS users deal with this type of widgets. We report on the results of a laboratory study and an online survey, investigating iOS users' experience with swhidgets. Our results suggest that swhidgets are moderately but unevenly known by participants, yet the awareness and the discovery issues of this design is worthy of further discussion

TurboMouse: End-to-end Latency Compensation in Indirect Interaction

International audienceEnd-to-end latency corresponds to the temporal difference between a user input and the corresponding output from a system. It has been shown to degrade user performance in both direct and indirect interaction. If it can be reduced to some extend, latency can also be compensated through software compensation by trying to predict the future position of the cursor based on previous positions, velocities and accelerations. In this paper, we propose a hybrid hardware and software prediction technique specifically designed for partially compensating end-to-end latency in indirect pointing. We combine a computer mouse with a high frequency accelerometer to predict the future location of the pointer using Euler based equations

Interaction Interferences: Implications of Last-Instant System State Changes

International audienceWe study interaction interferences, situations where an unexpected change occurs in an interface immediately before the user performs an action, causing the corresponding input to be misinterpreted by the system. For example, a user tries to select an item in a list, but the list is automatically updated immediately before the click, causing the wrong item to be selected. First, we formally define interaction interferences and discuss their causes from behavioral and system-design perspectives. Then, we report the results of a survey examining users' perceptions of the frequency, frustration, and severity of interaction interferences. We also report a controlled experiment , based on state-of-the-art experimental protocols from neuroscience, that explores the minimum time interval, before clicking, below which participants could not refrain from completing their action. Finally, we discuss our findings and their implications for system design, paving the way for future work

Investigating Performance and Usage of Input Methods for Soft Keyboard Hotkeys

International audienceTouch-based devices, despite their mainstream availability, do not support a unified and efficient command selection mechanism, available on every platform and application. We advocate that hotkeys, conventionally used as a shortcut mechanism on desktop computers, could be generalized as a command selection mechanism for touch-based devices, even for keyboard-less applications. In this paper, we investigate the performance and usage of soft keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys (abbreviated SoftCuts) through two studies comparing different input methods across sitting, standing and walking conditions. Our results suggest that SoftCuts not only are appreciated by participants but also support rapid command selection with different devices and hand configurations. We also did not find evidence that walking deters their performance when using the Once input method

IconHK: Using Toolbar Button Icons to Communicate Keyboard Shortcuts

International audienceWe propose a novel perspective on the design of toolbar buttons that aims to increase keyboard shortcut accessibility. IconHK implements this perspective by blending visual cues that convey keyboard shortcut information into toolbar buttons without denaturing the pictorial representation of their command. We introduce three design strategies to embed the hotkey, a visual encoding to convey the modifiers, and a magnification factor that determines the blending ratio between the pictogram of the button and the visual representation of the keyboard shortcut. Two studies examine the benefits of IconHK for end-users and provide insights from professional designers on the practicality of our approach for creating iconsets. Building on these insights, we develop a tool to assist designers in applying the IconHK design principle

Interaction Illustration Taxonomy: Classification of Styles and Techniques for Visually Representing Interaction Scenarios

International audienceStatic illustrations are ubiquitous means to represent interaction scenarios. Across papers and reports, these visuals demonstrate people's use of devices, explain systems, or show design spaces. Creating such figures is challenging, and very little is known about the overarching strategies for visually representing interaction scenarios. To mitigate this task, we contribute a unified taxonomy of design elements that compose such figures. In particular, we provide a detailed classification of Structural and Interaction strategies, such as composition, visual techniques, dynamics, representation of users, and many others-all in context of the type of scenarios. This taxonomy can inform researchers' choices when creating new figures, by providing a concise synthesis of visual strategies, and revealing approaches they were not aware of before. Furthermore, to support the community for creating further taxonomies, we also provide three open-source software facilitating the coding process and visual exploration of the coding scheme