published_or_final_version / abstract / Architecture / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Mechanical Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Humans have a strong natural ability to remember item locations. In graphical user interfaces, this ability is one of the primary mechanisms by which users become efficient. However, there are two ways in which modern applications often fail to exploit the potential of spatial memory. First, they overuse hierarchical structures such as cascading menus, which slows down interaction for expert users who already know item locations; and second, they move items around, most commonly in response to changing display geometry. The three goals of this thesis are therefore to (1) develop a better understanding of human spatial memory in the context of user interfaces; (2) design and validate efficient command-selection interfaces based on the strength of spatial memory; and (3) design and validate interface strategies that allow users to maintain spatial memory even when display geometry changes. Addressing goal (1), a comprehensive literature review of spatial memory for user interfaces is presented. The review covers underlying psychological models of spatial memory, the observable properties of spatial memory, and existing applications of spatial memory to human-computer interaction. In addition to informing the research in this thesis, the review is intended to provide a useful summary of the state of spatial memory research for scientists in HCI, as well as providing a set of design guidelines on spatial memory for practitioners. Addressing goal (2), this thesis presents the design and evaluation of two related user interface techniques, CommandMaps and StencilMaps. The CommandMap is a spatially stable interface with a flattened hierarchy, intended as a replacement for cascading menu systems. Theoretical performance predictions indicate that CommandMaps should be significantly faster than traditional user interfaces such as menus and the Microsoft Office Ribbon, and laboratory-based empirical studies of command selection confirm these predictions. These positive results motivated the design and implementation of two real-world CommandMap user interfaces based on Microsoft Word and Pinta (an open-source image editing application). Evaluation results confirmed that CommandMaps continue to demonstrate performance and subjective advantages in the context of actual tasks, including interleaved command selection, typing, and direct manipulation. Qualitative data gathered from interviews, questionnaires, and conversations provide substantial insight into users' reactions to CommandMaps, leading to a set of design recommendations regarding when and how they should be implemented in real applications. One design limitation identified during CommandMap evaluations was that novice users could be initially overwhelmed by the number of controls displayed at once. To address this concern, an extension to the CommandMap, called a StencilMap, was designed and evaluated. By using a stencil overlay to de-emphasise more advanced controls, the StencilMap directs users' visual search to a subset of controls they are most likely to need. Then, when novice users progress to the full interface, they can utilise their existing knowledge of command locations. An initial study shows that stencils are more effective at guiding visual search than ephemeral adaptation, another subset emphasis technique; however, users' spatial learning decreases as the amount of guidance increases. A second study compared StencilMaps to a palette-based subset interface, which displays the most likely commands in a ready-to-hand tool panel. Results show that StencilMaps enable stronger learning of the full UI compared to the palette approach. Addressing goal (3), this thesis presents an investigation of how interfaces can be adapted to changing interface constraints while still supporting the user's memory for item locations. A human factors study on spatially consistent transformations was conducted, with results showing that people's spatial memory is only minimally disrupted by geometric transformations (such as scaling, translation, or perspective distortion), as long as the set of items in a display is transformed as a whole. This idea is then applied to a file browser layout: by scaling the item grid when the parent window is resized, rather than reflowing items, memory for item locations can be maintained. A second study validates this idea, showing that a scaling interface outperforms both reflow and scrolling-based techniques for revisitation when windows are resized. In summary, the contributions of this thesis are: (1) an in-depth literature review of spatial memory in psychology and HCI, which is intended to inform designers and future researchers as well as the material in this thesis; (2) the design, implementation and evaluation of a new interface, the CommandMap, which shows that spatial stability and hierarchy flattening enable a high ceiling of expert performance; (3) the design of a stencil overlay technique to help novice users find commands, and an evaluation highlighting the key trade-off between helping users and allowing them to learn; and (4) empirical evidence showing that most types of whole-interface transformations have a small effect on spatial memory, and that correspondingly, scaling interfaces outperform reflowing interfaces under changing window constraints.

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.

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by Lam Siu Hong. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references. / Chapter Chapter1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Software Development Crisis of User Interface --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Objectives and Scope of Interests --- p.1 / Chapter 1.3 --- Overview of the Thesis --- p.2 / Chapter Chapter2 --- Background and Problems --- p.4 / Chapter 2.1 --- Categories of User Interfaces --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2 --- Trends of User Interfaces --- p.6 / Chapter 2.3 --- Some other Desirable Features and Problems of UI Development --- p.7 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Separating UI from Application --- p.7 / Chapter 2.3.1.1 --- Benefits of Separable UIs and Applications --- p.7 / Chapter 2.3.1.2 --- Requirements of Complete Separation --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Instant Continuous Feedback --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3.2.1 --- Problems of Linguistic Model on World Model Type UIs --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- Undo and Recovery --- p.15 / Chapter 2.3.4 --- Iterative Design through Rapid Protyping --- p.16 / Chapter Chapter3 --- An Object-Oriented Model for Model World User Interfaces Development --- p.18 / Chapter 3.1 --- Features of UIs to be supported by the Model --- p.18 / Chapter 3.2 --- A Linkage Model for Separating UI from Application --- p.19 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Communication Messages Modeled using an Object Oriented Approach --- p.20 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- A Sample Message --- p.22 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Linkage in a Distributed Heterogenous Environment --- p.24 / Chapter 3.2.4 --- Comparing the Linkage Model with the Application Interface Model in Seeheim's UI Model --- p.25 / Chapter 3.3 --- An Object-Oriented Model for Supporting Multiple Feedbacks and Multi-thread dialogue --- p.26 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- An Overview of the Model --- p.27 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Objects on the Lexical Layer --- p.28 / Chapter 3.3.3 --- Roles of Presentation Objects --- p.29 / Chapter 3.3.4 --- Syntactic Objects --- p.31 / Chapter 3.3.5 --- Interaction Objects --- p.32 / Chapter 3.3.6 --- Interaction between objetcs and Linkage Component --- p.33 / Chapter 3.3.7 --- Multiple U-tubes Ladder for Supporting Multiple Feedbacks --- p.33 / Chapter 3.3.8 --- Recovery through a Generic UNDO stack --- p.35 / Chapter 3.3.9 --- Dialogue Control in an Object --- p.37 / Chapter 3.3.10 --- Interactive Objects --- p.39 / Chapter 3.3.11 --- An Architecture for Supporting Multi-thread Dialogue --- p.40 / Chapter 3.4 --- Basic Object Structure --- p.42 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- An Event Model for Dialogue Control --- p.43 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Maintain Consistency through ε-rules --- p.45 / Chapter 3.4.3 --- An Example of an Inner Object Specification --- p.47 / Chapter 3.4.4 --- Pre and Post Condition of Action --- p.49 / Chapter 3.4.5 --- Automatic Message Routing --- p.49 / Chapter 3.5 --- Systematic Approach to UI Specification --- p.50 / Chapter Chapter4 --- User Interface Framework Design --- p.52 / Chapter 4.1 --- A Framework for UI Development --- p.52 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Abstract Base Class for Each Object Type --- p.54 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- A Kernel for Message Routing --- p.60 / Chapter 4.1.3 --- Interaction Knowledge Base --- p.63 / Chapter 4.1.4 --- A Dynamic View of UI Objects --- p.64 / Chapter 4.1.5 --- Switch Box Mechanism for Dialogue Switching --- p.66 / Chapter 4.1.6 --- Software IC Construction --- p.68 / Chapter 4.2 --- Summaries of Object-Object UI Model and UI Framework --- p.70 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- A New Approach to User Interface Development 、 --- p.70 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Feautures of UI Development provided by the Object-Object UI Model and UI Framework --- p.71 / Chapter Chapter5 --- Implementation --- p.73 / Chapter 5.1 --- Implementation of Framework in Microsoft Window Environment --- p.73 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Implementation of automatic message routing through dynamic binding --- p.73 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- A generic message structure --- p.75 / Chapter 5.1.3 --- A meta class for object communication --- p.76 / Chapter 5.1.4 --- Software component of UI framework in Microsoft Window environment --- p.76 / Chapter 5.2 --- A Simple Stock Market Decision Support System (SSMDSS) --- p.77 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- UI Specification --- p.81 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- UI features supported by SSMDSS --- p.87 / Chapter Chapter6 --- Results --- p.89 / Chapter 6.1 --- Facts discovered --- p.89 / Chapter 6.1.1 --- Asynchronous and synchronous communication among objects --- p.89 / Chapter 6.1.2 --- Flexibility of the C+ + language --- p.90 / Chapter 6.2 --- Technical Problems Encountered --- p.91 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- Problems from Implementation Platform --- p.91 / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Problems due to Object Decomposition in an Interactive Object in SSMDSS --- p.92 / Chapter 6.3 --- Objectives accomplished by the Object-Oriented UI Model indicated by SSMDSS --- p.93 / Chapter Chapter7 --- Conclusion --- p.95 / Chapter 7.1 --- Thesis Summary --- p.95 / Chapter 7.2 --- Merits and Demerit of the Object-Oriented UI Model --- p.96 / Chapter 7.3 --- Cost of the Object-Oriented UI Model --- p.96 / Chapter 7.4 --- Future work --- p.97 / Appendix / Chapter A1 --- An Alogrithm for Converting Transition Network Diagram to Event Response Language --- p.A1 / Chapter A2 --- An Object-Oriented Software Development --- p.A4 / Chapter A2.1 --- Traditional Non Object-Oriented Software Development --- p.A4 / Chapter A2.2 --- An Object-Oriented Software Development --- p.A6 / Chapter A3 --- Vienna Development Method (VDM) --- p.A8 / Chapter A3.1 --- An Overview of VDM --- p.A8 / Chapter A3.2 --- Apply VDM to Object-Oriented UI model --- p.A10 / Chapter A4 --- Glossaries and Terms --- p.A12 / Reference

by Fong Siu-kit. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-77). / Abstract --- p.1 / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.2 / Chapter 2. --- Background and Related Work --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1 --- Requirements of a Good Query Language /Interface --- p.5 / Chapter 2.2 --- Casual versus Frequent Users --- p.6 / Chapter 2.3 --- Graphical User Interface --- p.8 / Chapter 2.4 --- Windowing --- p.10 / Chapter 2.5 --- Use of Voice in User Interface --- p.11 / Chapter 2.6 --- Related Work --- p.12 / Chapter 2.6.1 --- Examples of Query Interface Designs in the Literature --- p.13 / Chapter 2.6.2 --- Examples of Query Interfaces in Commercial Packages --- p.15 / Chapter 3. --- Interface Design Concepts --- p.17 / Chapter 3.1 --- Data Model --- p.18 / Chapter 3.2 --- General Guidelines on Interface Design --- p.19 / Chapter 3.3 --- Divide and Conquer Strategy --- p.21 / Chapter 3.4 --- Unit of Operation --- p.24 / Chapter 3.5 --- The Second Clicking Principle --- p.26 / Chapter 3.6 --- Use of Voice in the Interface --- p.28 / Chapter 3.7 --- Customization of User Level --- p.29 / Chapter 4. --- Interface Specification and implementation --- p.30 / Chapter 4.1 --- System Menu --- p.31 / Chapter 4.2 --- ER Diagram and Tables Window --- p.33 / Chapter 4.3 --- Overview on R Window and Result Icon Window --- p.36 / Chapter 4.4 --- Choose Fields Operation --- p.38 / Chapter 4.5 --- Choose Rows Operation --- p.41 / Chapter 4.6 --- Combine Tables Operation --- p.45 / Chapter 4.7 --- For Each Group Operation --- p.49 / Chapter 4.8 --- Set Operations --- p.50 / Chapter 4.9 --- Decomposition and Recomposition of Queries --- p.51 / Chapter 5. --- Example of Application for a Complex Query --- p.54 / Chapter 6. --- Help Facilities and Error Handling --- p.63 / Chapter 6.1 --- Help Function --- p.64 / Chapter 6.2 --- Error Diagnosis --- p.66 / Chapter 7. --- Summary and Conclusion --- p.69 / Bibliography --- p.73 / Appendix --- p.78

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2009

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2009