Improving Usability of Interactive Graphics Specification and Implementation with Picking Views and Inverse Transformations

Specifying and programming graphical interactions are difficult tasks, notably because designers have difficulties to express the dynamics of the interaction. This paper shows how the MDPC architecture improves the usability of the specification and the implementation of graphical interaction. The architecture is based on the use of picking views and inverse transforms from the graphics to the data. With three examples of graphical interaction, we show how to express them with the architecture, how to implement them, and how this improves programming usability. Moreover, we show that it enables implementing graphical interaction without a scene graph. This kind of code prevents from errors due to cache consistency management

A visual perception account of programming languages : finding the natural science in the art

première version pour VL/HCC 2012 deuxième version pour POPL 2013There is no agreed set of grounded principles on which to rely to analyze and discuss code representations. I propose a combination of Semiotic of Graphics and ScanVis. I discovered that this unifying framework brings together many aspects of visual layout and appearance of programming languages. We describe how the framework applies to programming languages, which is not obvious and has never been done before. We show how to use the framework to compare representation of code by relying on sound arguments. Finally, we use the framework to devise design principles to help generate new representations. Relying on such a framework can help researchers and designers invent better languages with respect to this concern. This work also suggests that the gap between textual and graphical languages is narrow, and that true visual languages should rely on the capability of the human visual system

Improving users’ comprehension of changes with animation and sound: an empirical assessment

Animation or sound is often used in user interfaces as an attempt to improve users' perception and comprehension of evolving situations and support them in decision-making. However, empirical data establishing their real effectiveness on the comprehension of changes are still lacking. We have carried out an experiment using four combinations of visual and auditory feedback in a split attention task. The results not only confirm that such feedback improves the perception of changes, but they also demonstrate that animation and sound used alone or combined bring major improvements on the comprehension of a changing situation. Based on these results, we propose design guidelines about the most efficient combinations to be used in user interfaces

Extension d'un modèle de visualisation pour la caracterisation d'interfaces graphiques dynamiques

International audienceLes systèmes de contrôle du trafic aérien présentent des informations en utilisant de multiples variables visuelles. Dans cet article, nous caractérisons quatre de ces systèmes en utilisant le modèle de Card, Mackinlay et Bertin. La spécificité des visualisations étudiées nous amène à étendre ce modèle en différenciant les formes codant l'information volontairement, des formes générées par le processus d'émergence de la Gestalt , en précisant les relations hiérarchiques entre éléments graphiques, et en explicitant le rôle du temps dans la dynamique de l'interface. Ces travaux permettent de caractériser plus précisément les visualisations, d'affiner notre compréhension des transformations qui génèrent une visualisation, ainsi que le rôle de la perception dans l'interprétation d'une visualisation.The air traffic control systems display information using multiple visual variables. In this article, we characterize these systems using Card, Mackinlay and Bertin model. The specificity of the visualizations we studied leads us to extend this model by clarifying the role of time in the dynamics of the interface, and by differentiating the forms coding information deliberately, from the forms generated by the emergence process of the Gestalt. This work helps characterize visualizations more precisely, refine our understanding of the transformations that generate visualization, as well as the role of perception in the interpretation of a visualization

Hayaku : designing and optimizing finely tuned and portable interactive graphics with a graphical compiler

International audienceAlthough reactive and graphically rich interfaces are now mainstream, their development is still a notoriously difficult task. This paper presents Hayaku, a toolset that supports designing finely tuned interactive graphics. With Hayaku, a designer can abstract graphics in a class, describe the connections between input and graphics through this class, and compile it into runnable code with a graphical compile chain. The benefits of this approach are multiple. First, the frontend of the compiler is a rich standard graphical language that designers can use with existing drawing tools. Second, manipulating a data flow and abstracting the low-level run-time through a front-end language makes the transformation from data to graphics easier for designers. Third, the graphical interaction code can be ported to other platforms with minimal changes, while benefiting from optimizations provided by the graphical compiler

Edition synchrone de plusieurs objets : services et interaction

International audienceGraphical interactions that modify many objects at once have not been studied systematically. Based on contextual inquiries of designers, and on previous systems and work, we have identified the services required for an efficient interaction with multiple objects: set management, action management, and support for exploratory design. We present a number of interactions that provide a subset of the identified services, by relying on an improved property sheet. This work may enable designers to design more consistent and more powerful interactions

Exploration of aircraft trails by Air Traffic Experts

International audienceIn this paper, we describe a set of applications and findings performed by Air Traffic Control (ATC) experts while interactively exploring recorded aircraft trails. ATC experts deal with recorded radar data (aircraft positions, altitude, time, etc). This large quantity of information spoils their visualization with a lot of occlusion and cluttering. With a simple paradigm of brush, pick and drop, users can intuitively filter the dataset by direct manipulation of trails. Through applied examples, we show how a visualization tool and its real time applications take advantage of human vision and are therefore assets for data exploration and validation. This tool allows the visualization and the interaction with large quantity of information, hence enabling overview of the dataset at a whole and quick retrieval of insights

Supporting both exploratory design and power of action with a new property sheet

Graphical interaction designers often make tradeoffs between supporting exploratory design and power of action. In this paper, we describe a new property sheet and a set of interaction that aims at supporting both. Thanks to a new visualization of properties and values, and modeless, example-based interaction and selection, designers can make an opportunistic use of implicit groups to augment their power of action

A process-oriented approach to the science of human-computer interaction

Since the birth of the field, HCI has defined itself both as a theory of therelations between humans and numerical systems and as a practical activity that aimsat building new interactive systems. However, HCI has not yet succeeded in discoveringa unified theoretical framework nor in building a strong link between both activities.Based on an analysis from various fields, we show that most of the difficulties come fromthe computational paradigm that is still used as a foundation of most of the theories inHCI. This brings us to proposing a new philosophical view on the science of HCI, basedon a process ontology. We show how it accounts for several phenomena related to HCIand unifies them. This approach lends itself to new ways of thinking and programminginteraction at di↵erent scales, which may help HCI scientists in their modelling and designactivities

Augmenting the scope of interactions with implicit and explicit graphical structures

International audienceWhen using interactive graphical tools, users often have to manage a structure, i.e. the arrangement of and relations between the parts or elements of the content. However, the interaction with structures may be complex, and not well integrated with the interaction with the content. Based on contextual inquiries and past works, we have identified a number of concepts and requirements about the interaction with structure. We have explored two interactive tools: a new kind of property sheet that relies on the implicit struc-ture of graphics; and a property delegation graph to enable users to provide an explicit graphical structure. The interac-tions with the tools augment the scope of interactions to multiple objects