Semantic Tagging on Historical Maps

Tags assigned by users to shared content can be ambiguous. As a possible solution, we propose semantic tagging as a collaborative process in which a user selects and associates Web resources drawn from a knowledge context. We applied this general technique in the specific context of online historical maps and allowed users to annotate and tag them. To study the effects of semantic tagging on tag production, the types and categories of obtained tags, and user task load, we conducted an in-lab within-subject experiment with 24 participants who annotated and tagged two distinct maps. We found that the semantic tagging implementation does not affect these parameters, while providing tagging relationships to well-defined concept definitions. Compared to label-based tagging, our technique also gathers positive and negative tagging relationships. We believe that our findings carry implications for designers who want to adopt semantic tagging in other contexts and systems on the Web.Comment: 10 page

On Merging Command Selection and Direct Manipulation

We present the results of a study comparing the relative benefits of three command selection techniques that merge command selection and direct manipulation: one two-handed technique , Toolglass, and two one-handed techniques , control menus and FlowMenu. Our results show that control menus and FlowMenu are significantly faster than Toolglass. Further analysis suggests that merging command selection and direct manipulation is the key factor in the performance of all three techniques. Keywords: FlowMenu, control menus, tool palette, Toolglass, empirical studies (UMIACS-TR-2002-91) (HCIL-TR-2002-20

Paper Augmented Digital Documents

Paper Augmented Digital Documents (PADD), are digital documents that can be manipulated either on a computer screen or on paper. PADD, and the infrastructure supporting them, can be seen as a bridge between the digital and the paper worlds. As digital documents, PADD are easy to edit, distribute and archive; as paper documents, PADD are easy to navigate, annotate and well accepted in social settings. The chimeric nature of PADD makes them well suited for many tasks such as proofreading, editing, and annotation of large format document like blueprints. We are presenting an architecture which supports the seamless manipulation of PADs using today's technologies and reports on the lessons we learned while implementing the first PADD system. Keywords: Paper Augmented Digital Document, Paper based user interface, digital pen UMIACS-TR-2003-4

Measuring FlowMenu Performance

This paper evaluates the performance characteristics of FlowMenu, a new type of pop-up menu mixing command and direct manipulation. FlowMenu was compared with marking menus on a simple selection task, and with tool palette selection on a task that combined selection with drawing. Our results compared with those in previous experiments indicate that FlowMenu offers as much of an advantag over tool palette selection as does Toolglass, a two-handed technique. At the same time, it is not significantly slower than marking menus. Additional results show that selection performance depends on distance around the menu, but not on initial position or direction. These results provide a guide for the design of high-performance menu configurations. Keywords: FlowMenu, marking menu, tool palette, Tool-glass, empirical studies (UMIACS-TR-2002-88) (HCIL-TR-2002-17

Accuracy, Target Reentry and Fitts' Law Performance of Preschool Children Using Mice

Several experiments by psychologists and human factors researchers have shown that when young children execute pointing tasks, they perform at levels below older children and adults. However, these experiments were not conducted with the purpose of providing guidelines for the design of graphical user interfaces. To address this need, we conducted a study to gain a better understanding of 4 and 5 year-old children's use of mice. We compared the performance of thirteen 4 year-olds, thirteen 5 year-olds and thirteen young adults in point-and-click tasks. As expected, we found age had a significant effect on accuracy, target reentry and Fitts' law's index of performance. We also found that target size had a significant effect on accuracy and target reentry. Measuring movement time at four different times (first entering target, last entering target, pressing button, releasing button) yielded the result tha Fitts' law models children well only for the first time they enter the target. Another interesting result was that using the adjusted index of difficulty (IDe) in Fitts' law calculations yielded lower linear regression correlation coefficients than using the unadjusted index of difficulty (ID). These results provide valuable guidelines for the design of graphical user interfaces for young children, in particular when it comes to sizing visual targets. They also suggest designers should adopt strategies to accommodate users with varying levels of skill. (UMIACS-2003-42) (HCIL-2003-16

Benefits of Merging Command Selection and Direct Manipulation

Toolglass [Bier et al. 1993] demonstrated a two-handed command selection technique that combined command selection and direct manipulation. While empirical evaluations showed the speed advantage of ToolGlass, they did not show the relative importance of two possible factors in its improved performance: 1) the use of two hands and 2) the merging of command selection and direct manipulation. We conducted a study comparing the relative benefits of three command selection techniques that merge command selection and direct manipulation: one two-handed technique, Toolglass, and two one-handed techniques, control menus [Pook et al., 2000] and FlowMenu [Guimbretière and Winograd, 2000]. Participants performed sequences of operations that required both selecting a color and designating the endpoints of a line. Our results show that control menus and FlowMenu are significantly faster than Toolglass. Further analysis suggests that the merging of command selection and direct manipulation is the most important factor in the performance of all three techniques

Design and analysis of delimiters for selection-action pen gesture phrases in Scriboli

We present a quantitative analysis of delimiters for pen gestures. A delimiter is “something different ” in the input stream that a computer can use to determine the structure of input phrases. We study four techniques for delimiting a selection-action gesture phrase consisting of lasso selection plus marking-menu-based command activation. Pigtail is a new technique that uses a small loop to delimit lasso selection from marking (Fig. 1). Handle adds a box to the end of the lasso, from which the user makes a second stroke for marking. Timeout uses dwelling with the pen to delimit the lasso from the mark. Button uses a button press to signal when to delimit the gesture. We describe the role of delimiters in our Scriboli pen interaction testbed, and show how Pigtail supports scope selection, command activation, and direct manipulation all in a single fluid pen gesture

Enhancing Document Navigation Tasks With a Dual- Display Electronic Reader

We present a prototype dual-display e-book reader that is designed to improve the electronic reading experience. Our device uses lightweight embodied interactions to support unselfconscious local navigation. We incorporate mechanisms such as Space Filling Thumbnails, which take advantage of the increased display space on our device to aid global navigation. To accommodate the need for cross document operations and flexible layout of documents in the workspace, our prototype provides detachable faces that can operate independently. ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces an