Graceful interaction with graphical constraints

The graphical constraint editor (GRACE), a graphical editor that lets users define graphical, or geometric, constraints, is reviewed. Graphical constraints specify relationships among graphical objects that the system must maintain. Constraints are useful in graphical drawing editors, design activities supported by CAD systems, and graphical user interface construction. GRACE provides mechanisms for explicit and implicit constraint specification using simple and natural means. These include simple direct manipulation methods and a constraints-by-demonstration facility that incorporates both novel heuristics for inferring user-demonstrated relations in an economical fashion and a natural-language explanation tool that helps the user understand the system's inferencing behavior. An overview of GRACE's user interface is presented and details about how users specify graphical relations and query the system to obtain information about them are provided     

How map designers can represent their ideas in thematic maps

Problem analysis in designing thematic maps and user interfaces which assist map designers in incorporating their ideas into maps are presented. Problems in designing choropleth maps are analyzed from the map designers point of view. A graphical user interface, called “Histogram Interface”, is implemented as countermeasure for problems in designing choropleth maps. The user interface can assist map designers in representing their ideas and achieving the desired maps through the designing process. The user interface operations, which correspond to the map designer's ideas, are explained. The user interface effectiveness is confirmed by resulting map examples and the corresponding graphical patterns on the interface. A concept is proposed concerning the importance in any computer graphics field, which the designers should consider in determining how to incorporate their ideas into pictures.     

Vu: visual user-interface design

Vu is an interactive visual programming environment, which enables interface designers to create highly interactive, graphical, direct-manipulation-style graphical user interfaces in a very natural manner. The general strategy of vu is to enable the designer to draw the screen display that the end user will see, and to test the interface by performing actions just as the end user would. This is achieved by providing exploratory programming in a highly visual and object-oriented environment. This paper describes the design principles and structure of vu.     

Defining Dynamic Graphics by a Graphical Language

A graphical language which can be used for defining dynamic picture and applying control actions to it is defined with an expanded attributed grammar.Based on this a system is built for developing the presentation of application data of user interface.This system provides user interface designers with a friendly and high efficient programming environment.     

基于X窗口的图形用户接口编辑器的设计与实现

本文介绍了一个用于描述、生成用户接口的具有彩排功能的图形用户接口编辑器的设计思想和实现方法．叙述了对话控制树和输入数据队列在用户接口和应用程序的分离中所起的作用．最后还讨论了一种基于事件驱动机制的对话控制字解释程序．     

Hierarchical scheduling in an intelligent environmental control system

This paper describes the design and implementation of a hierarchical scheduling subsystem and graphical user interface in an intelligent environmental control system. The hierarchical scheduling system is capable of managing all environmental events occurring in widely different time scales as specified by the user. We employ a knowledge representation scheme called a system entity structure to specify the environmental schedules in a hierarchical fashion. A system entity structure called TAL (Timed Action Language) is developed. TAL organizes a family of all possible long-/mid-/short-term schedules from which a specific schedule can be pruned by the user through graphical interface.Research was done while the author was a member of the Environmental Research Lab, University of Arizona. A Preliminary version of the paper was presented at 2nd International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of AI and Expert System [5].     

Graphically Defining New Building Blocks in ThingLab

ThingLab is a constraint-oriented, interactive graphical system for building simulations. A typical problem in ThingLab (and in systems like it) is that, to define an object with a new kind of constraint, the user must leave the graphical domain and write code in the underlying implementation language. This makes it difficult for less experienced users to add new kinds of constraints or to modify existing ones. As a step toward solving this problem, the system described here allows the graphical definition of objects that include new kinds of constraints. This is supported by an interface in which a user can open two views on an object being defined, a use view and a construction view. The use view shows the object's normal appearance; the construction view contains additional objects and constraints, which serve to graphically specify the new constraints on the defined object.     

The Impact of Tangible User Interfaces on Designers' Spatial Cognition

ABSTRACT

Most studies on tangible user interfaces for the tabletop design systems are being undertaken from a technology viewpoint. Although there have been studies that focus on the development of new interactive environments employing tangible user interfaces for designers, there is a lack of evaluation with respect to designers' spatial cognition. In this research we study the effects of tangible user interfaces on designers' spatial cognition to provide empirical evidence for the anecdotal views of the effect of tangible user interfaces. To highlight the expected changes in spatial cognition while using tangible user interfaces, we compared designers using a tangible user interface on a tabletop system with 3D blocks to designers using a graphical user interface on a desktop computer with a mouse and keyboard. The ways in which designers use the two different interfaces for 3D design were examined using a protocol analysis method. The result reveals that designers using 3D blocks perceived more spatial relationships among multiple objects and spaces and discovered new visuo-spatial features when revisiting their design configurations. The designers using the tangible interfaces spent more time in relocating objects to different locations to test the moves, and interacted with the external representation through large body movements implying an immersion in the design model. These two physical actions assist in designers' spatial cognition by reducing cognitive load in mental visual reasoning. Further, designers using the tangible interfaces spent more time in restructuring the design problem by introducing new functional issues as design requirements and produced more discontinuities to the design processes, which provides opportunity for reflection and modification of the design. Therefore this research shows that tangible user interfaces changes designers' spatial cognition, and the changes of the spatial cognition are associated with creative design processes.     

Lessons learned from programmers' experiences with one‐way constraints

One‐way constraints have been incorporated in many graphical user interface toolkits because they are simple to learn, easy to write, and can express many types of useful graphical relationships. This paper is an evaluative paper that examines users' experience with one‐way constraints in two user interface development toolkits, Garnet and Amulet, over a 15‐year time span. The lessons gained from this examination can help guide the design of future constraint systems. The most important lessons are that (1) constraints should be allowed to contain arbitrary code that is written in the underlying toolkit language and does not require any annotations, such as parameter declarations, (2) constraints are difficult to debug and better debugging tools are needed, and (3) programmers will readily use one‐way constraints to specify the graphical layout of an application, but must be carefully and time‐consumingly trained to use them for other purposes. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Toward support for hypermedia on the World Wide Web

As organizations rush to embrace the World Wide Web as their primary application infrastructure, they should not bypass the benefit of hypermedia support. The Web's infrastructure can serve as an interface to all interactive applications and, over time, will become the graphical user interface model for new applications. Ubiquitous hypermedia support should become the jewel of the Web environment. Through Web integration, hypermedia could become an integral part of every interactive application. With the proper tools to support hypermedia in Web application development, it will become second nature for developers and individual authors to provide supplemental links and hypermedia navigation. However, as organizations adopt the Web as their primary application infrastructure, designers may use Java and other tools to recreate current application functionality, and not take advantage of the Web's hypermedia-augmented infrastructure. If users, designers, MIS departments and organizations don't demand hypermedia support, hypermedia may get lost in the frenzy of Web integration     

Using task analysis to improve usability of fatigue modelling software

The design of any interactive computer system requires consideration of both humans and machines. Software usability is one aspect of human–computer interaction that can benefit from knowledge of the user and their tasks. One set of methods for determining whether an application enables users to achieve their predetermined goals effectively and efficiently is task analysis. In the present study, a task analysis was applied to the graphical user interface of fatigue modelling software used in industry. The task analysis procedure allowed areas of usability improvement to be identified and then addressed with alternate interface prototypes. The present method of task analysis illustrates a practical and efficient way for software designers to improve software usability, user effectiveness and satisfaction, by involving users in the design process.     

Behind the screen: DSS from an OR point of view

Interactive planning systems are a relatively new phenomenon in the practice of operations research. We review the role of quantitative models and methods and the need for man-machine interaction in practical planning situations. We specify a number of desirable functional requirements of an interactive planning system, and discuss the graphical user interface and the use of various representations. We comment on the types of solution strategies involved and relate some of our own experience.     

Interactive design of 3D models with geometric constraints

In this paper, an interactive graphical approach for the design of parameterized part-hierarchies is presented. Primitive solids can be grouped into compound objects, and multiple instances of a compound object can be used in further designs. Geometric relations between primitives and instances are specified by geometric constraints between their local coordinate systems. The user can specify and edit a model by direct manipulation on a perspective or parallel projection with a mouse, whereas a procedural model representations is automatically generated via visual programming. The obtained twoview approach offers two concurrent interface styles to the end-user and enables the combination of an intuitive direct manipulation interface with the expressiveness of a procedural modeling language.     

Querying Event Sequences by Exact Match or Similarity Search: Design and Empirical Evaluation

Specifying event sequence queries is challenging even for skilled computer professionals familiar with SQL. Most graphical user interfaces for database search use an exact match approach, which is often effective, but near misses may also be of interest. We describe a new similarity search interface, in which users specify a query by simply placing events on a blank timeline and retrieve a similarity-ranked list of results. Behind this user interface is a new similarity measure for event sequences which the users can customize by four decision criteria, enabling them to adjust the impact of missing, extra, or swapped events or the impact of time shifts. We describe a use case with Electronic Health Records based on our ongoing collaboration with hospital physicians. A controlled experiment with 18 participants compared exact match and similarity search interfaces. We report on the advantages and disadvantages of each interface and suggest a hybrid interface combining the best of both.     

Visual and textual consistency checking tools for graphical userinterfaces

Designing user interfaces with consistent visual and textual properties is difficult. To demonstrate the harmful effects of inconsistency, we conducted an experiment with 60 subjects. Inconsistent interface terminology slowed user performance by 10 to 25 percent. Unfortunately, contemporary software tools provide only modest support for consistency control. Therefore, we developed SHERLOCK, a family of consistency analysis tools, which evaluates visual and textual properties of user interfaces. It provides graphical analysis tools such as a dialog box summary table that presents a compact overview of visual properties of all dialog boxes. SHERLOCK provides terminology analysis tools including an interface concordance, an interface spellchecker, and terminology baskets to check for inconsistent use of familiar groups of terms. Button analysis tools include a button concordance and a button layout table to detect variant capitalization, distinct typefaces, distinct colors, variant button sizes, and inconsistent button placements. We describe the design, software architecture, and the use of SHERLOCK. We tested SHERLOCK with four commercial prototypes. The outputs, analysis, and feedback from designers of the applications are presented     

Exploiting Background Information in Knowledge Discovery from Text

This paper describes the FACT system for knowledge discovery fromtext. It discovers associations—patterns ofco-occurrence—amongst keywords labeling the items in a collection oftextual documents. In addition, when background knowledge is available aboutthe keywords labeling the documents FACT is able to use this information inits discovery process. FACT takes a query-centered view of knowledgediscovery, in which a discovery request is viewed as a query over theimplicit set of possible results supported by a collection of documents, andwhere background knowledge is used to specify constraints on the desiredresults of this query process. Execution of a knowledge-discovery query isstructured so that these background-knowledge constraints can be exploitedin the search for possible results. Finally, rather than requiring a user tospecify an explicit query expression in the knowledge-discovery querylanguage, FACT presents the user with a simple-to-use graphical interface tothe query language, with the language providing a well-defined semantics forthe discovery actions performed by a user through the interface.     

Requirements for graphical user interface development environments for groupware

Most user interface designers are conversant with graphical user interface (GUI) tools such as Motif¹ and Presentation Manager² which provide ‘widgets’ and other facilities for building user interfaces. Such GUI tools were developed primarily for building interfaces to single-user systems. The purpose of the paper is to present the result of research into the requirements for GUI tools for multi-user systems. Many of the requirements of single and multi-user GUIs are the same, for example, usability and flexibility. A number of new widgets are needed for multi-user GUIs, for example, shared scroll-bars and multi-user telepointers. The requirements are divided into three groups based on three sources of requirements: literature, user survey and widgets.     

一种基于Linux的图形用户接口的设计与实现

介绍一种采用标准C语言开发的Linux图形用户接口设计思想与实现方法,提供简单易用的图形用户编程接口,在此基础上用户可以高效便捷地开发出具有良好可移植性的图形界面应用程序。