Thesis (M.S.)--University of Montana, 2007. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed Mar. 14, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 84).

We present a novel approach to text visualization called descriptive non-photorealistic rendering which exploits the inherent spatial and abstract dimensions in text documents to integrate 3D non-photorealistic rendering with information visualization. The visualization encodes text data onto 3D models, emphasizing the relative signi ficance of words in the text and the physical, real-world relationships between those words. Analytic exploration is supported through a collection of interactive widgets and direct multitouch interaction with the 3D models. We applied our method to analyze a collection of vehicle complaint reports from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and through a qualitative evaluation study, we demonstrate how our system can support tasks such as comparing the reliability of di fferent makes and models, finding interesting facts, and revealing possible causal relations between car parts. / UOIT

The general problem of application development of interactive GUI applications has been addressed by toolkits, libraries, user interface management systems, and more recently domain-specific application frameworks. However, the most sophisticated solution offered by frameworks still lacks a number of features which are addressed by this research: 1) limited functionality -- the framework does little to help the developer implement the application's functionality. 2) weak model of the application -- the framework does not incorporate a strong model of the overall architecture of the application program. 3) representation of control sequences is difficult to understand, edit, and reuse -- higher-level, direct-manipulation tools are needed. We address these problems with a new framework design called Oregon Speedcode Universe version 3.0 (OSU v3.0) which is shown, by demonstration, to overcome the limitations above: 1) functionality is provided by a rich set of built-in functions organized as a class hierarchy, 2) a strong model is provided by OSU v3.0 in the form of a modified MVC paradigm, and a Petri net based sequencing language which together form the architectural structure of all applications produced by OSU v3.0. 3) representation of control sequences is easily constructed within OSU v3.0 using a Petri net editor, and other direct manipulation tools built on top of the framework. In ddition: 1) applications developed in OSU v3.0 are partially portable because the framework can be moved to another platform, and applications are dependent on the class hierarchy of OSU v3.0 rather than the operating system of a particular platform, 2) the functionality of OSU v3.0 is extendable through addition of classes, subclassing, and overriding of existing methods. The main contribution of this research is in the design of an application framework that uses Petri nets as the computational model of data processing in the synthesized application. OSU v3.0 is the first framework to formalize sequencing, and to show that complex GUI applications can indeed be quickly and reliably produced from such a framework. / Graduation date: 1992

<p>This thesis is concerned with the design, development, and evaluation of information visualization tools for supporting exploratory browsing. Information retrieval (IR) systems currently do not support browsing well. Responding to user queries, IR systems typically compute relevance scores of documents and then present the document surrogates to users in order of relevance. Other systems such as email clients and discussion forums simply arrange messages in reverse chronological order. Using these systems, people cannot gain an overview of a collection easily, nor do they receive adequate support for finding potentially useful items in the collection.</p> <p>This thesis explores the feasibility of using social interaction history to improve exploratory browsing. Social interaction history refers to traces of interaction among users in an information space, such as discussions that happen in the blogosphere or online newspapers through the commenting facility. The basic hypothesis of this work is that social interaction history can serve as a good indicator of the potential value of information items. Therefore, visualization of social interaction history would offer navigational cues for finding potentially valuable information items in a collection.</p> <p>To test this basic hypothesis, I conducted three studies. First, I ran statistical analysis of a social media data set. The results showed that there were positive relationships between traces of social interaction and the degree of interestingness of web articles. Second, I conducted a feasibility study to collect initial feedback about the potential of social interaction history to support information exploration. Comments from the participants were in line with the research hypothesis. Finally, I conducted a summative evaluation to measure how well visualization of social interaction history can improve exploratory browsing. The results showed that visualization of social interaction history was able to help users find interesting articles, to reduce wasted effort, and to increase user satisfaction with the visualization tool.</p>

A common way of organizing Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers (WIMP) interfaces is to group tools into tool containers, providing one visual representation. Common tool containers include toolbars and menus, as well as more complex tool containers, like Microsoft Offices Ribbon, Toolglasses, and marking menus. The location of tool containers has been studied extensively in the past using Fittss Law, which governs selection time; however, selection time is only one aspect of user performance. In this thesis, I show that tool container location affects other aspects of user performance, specifically attention and awareness. The problem investigated in this thesis is that designers lack an understanding of the effects of tool container location on two important user performance factors: attention and group awareness. My solution is to provide an initial understanding of the effects of tool container location on these factors. In solving this problem, I developed a taxonomy of tool container location, and carried out two research studies. The two research studies investigated tool container location in two contexts: single-user performance with desktop interfaces, and group performance in tabletop interfaces. Through the two studies, I was able to show that tool container location does affect attention and group awareness, and to provide new recommendations for interface designers.

Object handoff – that is, passing an object or tool to another person – is an extremely common activity in collaborative tabletop work. On digital tables, object handoff is typically accomplished by sliding the object on the table surface – but surface-only interactions can be slow and error-prone, particularly when there are multiple people carrying out multiple handoffs. An alternative approach is to use the space above the table for object handoff; this provides more room to move, but requires above-surface tracking. I developed two above-the-surface handoff techniques that use simple and inexpensive tracking: a force-field technique that uses a depth camera to determine hand proximity, and an electromagnetic-field technique called ElectroTouch that provides positive indication when people touch hands over the table. These new techniques were compared to three kinds of existing surface-only handoff (sliding, flicking, and surface-only Force-Fields). The study showed that the above-surface techniques significantly improved both speed and accuracy, and that ElectroTouch was the best technique overall. Also, as object interactions are moved above-the-surface of the table the representation of off-table objects becomes crucial. To address the issue of off-table digital object representation several object designs were created an evaluated. The result of the present research provides designers with practical new techniques for substantially increasing performance and interaction richness on digital tables.

To date, the self-revealing interface has been the elusive holy grail of the user interface community. This research advocates the use of early language learning as a model for early user interface learning. This model can be used to reason about how users learn through exploration, and gain ideas as to how to design the implicit, online help needed to make a user interface self-revealing. The idea for this model came from a strong analogy between user interfaces and language. This analogy is based on fundamental similarities, and strengthened both by observations in a case study, and the general user interface literature. A case study of early exploratory user interface learning was done in the hopes of finding similarities between the learning of languages and interfaces. Although the study did reveal many similarities, which support the model, what was most interesting was their differences. Most notably, motherese, an important form of supportive feedback that is universally present in language learning, was missing in the user interface learning. Motherese is a distinct speech variant that is used by experienced language users in conversing with children. It helps to guide children towards an understanding of correct behaviours through acknowledgment, repetition, and correction of their utterances. An experiment was devised to evaluate an analogous type of instruction in the bootstrap learning of a novel user interface technique. The experiment validated the instruction's ability to shorten the initial learning period and ingrain new techniques better than un-aided exploratory learning. Motherese-style instruction meets the requirements for instruction that is self-revealing, and is firmly grounded by the strong analogy between language and user interfaces. The application of it to user interface learning is online and integrated within the actual context of the application. It is also demonstrative and non-verbal, giving users implicit instruction, and therefore does not suffer from the terminology or contextual switching issues that written instruction does. <br /><br /> Although a number of questions remain to be answered about the general applicability of motherese-inspired user interface instruction, the model presented has yielded the first empirically-based idea for designing self-revealing instruction. It is anticipated that future research using this model will help researchers to reason about both self-revealing instruction and new user behaviour.

<p>This thesis is concerned with the design, development, and evaluation of information visualization tools for supporting exploratory browsing. Information retrieval (IR) systems currently do not support browsing well. Responding to user queries, IR systems typically compute relevance scores of documents and then present the document surrogates to users in order of relevance. Other systems such as email clients and discussion forums simply arrange messages in reverse chronological order. Using these systems, people cannot gain an overview of a collection easily, nor do they receive adequate support for finding potentially useful items in the collection.</p> <p>This thesis explores the feasibility of using social interaction history to improve exploratory browsing. Social interaction history refers to traces of interaction among users in an information space, such as discussions that happen in the blogosphere or online newspapers through the commenting facility. The basic hypothesis of this work is that social interaction history can serve as a good indicator of the potential value of information items. Therefore, visualization of social interaction history would offer navigational cues for finding potentially valuable information items in a collection.</p> <p>To test this basic hypothesis, I conducted three studies. First, I ran statistical analysis of a social media data set. The results showed that there were positive relationships between traces of social interaction and the degree of interestingness of web articles. Second, I conducted a feasibility study to collect initial feedback about the potential of social interaction history to support information exploration. Comments from the participants were in line with the research hypothesis. Finally, I conducted a summative evaluation to measure how well visualization of social interaction history can improve exploratory browsing. The results showed that visualization of social interaction history was able to help users find interesting articles, to reduce wasted effort, and to increase user satisfaction with the visualization tool.</p>

A common way of organizing Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers (WIMP) interfaces is to group tools into tool containers, providing one visual representation. Common tool containers include toolbars and menus, as well as more complex tool containers, like Microsoft Offices Ribbon, Toolglasses, and marking menus. The location of tool containers has been studied extensively in the past using Fittss Law, which governs selection time; however, selection time is only one aspect of user performance. In this thesis, I show that tool container location affects other aspects of user performance, specifically attention and awareness. The problem investigated in this thesis is that designers lack an understanding of the effects of tool container location on two important user performance factors: attention and group awareness. My solution is to provide an initial understanding of the effects of tool container location on these factors. In solving this problem, I developed a taxonomy of tool container location, and carried out two research studies. The two research studies investigated tool container location in two contexts: single-user performance with desktop interfaces, and group performance in tabletop interfaces. Through the two studies, I was able to show that tool container location does affect attention and group awareness, and to provide new recommendations for interface designers.

Web-based user interfaces are used widely. They are replacing conventional desktop-based user interfaces in many domains and are emerging as front-ends for online businesses. The technologies for web user interfaces have advanced considerably to support high-quality user interfaces. However, the usability of web interfaces continues to be an issue. We still encounter web forms where basic interactive features are missing or work unexpectedly. User interface is a costly and error-prone area of software construction. This is particularly true for web user interfaces. They are typically implemented with fewer reusable components on programmers' toolboxes than conventional user interfaces built using user interface frameworks such as Windows Forms, Cocoa, and Qt. Consequently, web interface programmers tend to struggle with low productivity, or low quality and high defect rates. This thesis focuses on property models, a declarative approach to programming user interfaces. In this approach, common user interface behaviors are automatically derived from the specifications of the data manipulated by user interfaces. The approach aims to reuse user interface algorithms that are common across interfaces and allow the programmers to focus on application-specific concerns. This thesis work is a part of project "hotdrink," a JavaScript implementation of the property model system, which has the goal of providing the benefits of property models for web interfaces. This thesis builds on previous work on property models, and adds to it three reusable help and convenience features, which can be especially useful for web forms. In particular, this thesis describes the generic mechanisms of the following user interface features: (1) validating data coming from a user and presenting useful messages that help the user to fix errors, (2) controlling the flow of data through "pinning," and (3) canceling the user's previous actions through undoing. The main contributions of the thesis are the mechanisms and the software architecture that enable implementing these behaviors in a reusable manner. This thesis also presents several examples to illustrate the benefits of the proposed mechanisms.