novel visualization and interaction for large displays mary czerwinski microsoft research

vibe team Patrick Baudisch Mary Czerwinski Brian Meyers George Robertson Greg Smith Daniel Robbins Desney Tan Nuria Oliver

ignore science fiction at our peril Workstation in the world of the Matrix

large display surfaces are here Workstation in the real world

home setup Generic snapshot in real person’s bedroom

overview initial large display research –prototypes around usability issues observed visualization and interaction –new user experiences have to scale the wide continuum of displays future directions

harris poll responses (7/02, N=1197)

multimon usage trends no multimon 30% plan to use multimon 38% use multimon 32%

why a larger display surface? productivity benefits 10-30% (despite sw usability issues) users prefer more display surface prices dropping fast footprints getting smaller

1 st prototype--dSharp display triple projection matrox parhelia card 3028 x764 resolution 42 in. across slightly curved 120 degree FOV

task times – significant

user satisfaction - significant

windows layout - significant

tenets-- large display ux user studies show large display surfaces fundamentally change user interaction –designed tools to better understand/complement how work practice changes large display surfaces provide non-linear productivity increases –additional space has different utility –e.g. focal/peripheral displays provide different cues

but…usability issues why click to bring a clearly visible window into focus? caused many errors where is my cursor? where is my start button? where is my taskbar? where are my dialogs? the software doesn’t know where the bezel is…

input: high density cursor

mouse ether target start warp four problem scenarios when trying to acquire a target across screens, the mouse gets warped (1,2), funneled (3), or even blocked (4) solution (mouse ether) make mouse space = space users see allow mouse to move outside screens faster target acquisition targetstart warp gap between screens non-side-by-side high/low dpi target start blocked different res ƒ „  ‚ target start warp

input: drag-and-pop problem large displays create long distance mouse movement touch & pen input has problems moving between screen units solution drag-and-pop brings proxies of targets to the user from across display surfaces the user can complete drag interactions locally—no need to deal with distances or to cross display borders

vibelog: 2 research paths 1st activity repository for studying windows usage in aggregate –can profile users based on display size –can be extended to visualize workflow and capture context single user: capture task contexts to surface pertinent ui or provide reminders

multitask visualization colored block for each time point and app amount of shading indicates percentage of visibility of the window tasks subtasks

task switching visualization switching tasks (red to blue) how are windows arranged and used? »compare to...

windows and task management issues emerge larger displays = more open windows multimon users arrange windows spatially taskbar does not scale: –aggregation model not task-based –users can’t operate on groups of related windows

changes in window access patterns

multitasking support vibelog projectbar, layoutbar, groupbar scalable fabric task flasher

task management: groupbar taskbar for lightweight grouping of windows allows for multiple bars, spatial placement of bars ~400 internal downloads desktop snapshotting; task snapshots licensing to external companies

task management: scalable fabric configurable central focus + peripheral context easy task switch from periphery to focus area leverages human spatial memory patented, 100s of downloads

task flasher a more visual alt + tab uses 3d scaling and selection animation windows stay on the monitor on which they are positioned

visual search keyboard problem: many touchscreen systems (eg. SmartBoard, TabletPC) have no keyboard –use software virtual keyboard hard to hide password on a virtual keyboard –previous research showed users think anything on large display is considered public…they watch (Tan et al, CHI ‘03)

solution: secret passwords

scalable ui research datelens with Ben Bederson fishnet multiblending novel meeting support

datelens with Ben Bederson fisheye representation of dates compact overviews user control over the view integrated search (keyword) enables overviews, fluid navigation to discover patterns and outliers integrated with outlook

ishnet problem does this page contain the search term “player” ? hard to say—long webpages are clipped solution: fishnet compresses off-focus content (fisheye view) popouts preserve search terms in context entire webpage & search terms in one view player“p l a y e r”

table cloth problem: –user wants to access content physically far away solution: –pan the desktop to user –compress content to the right of focus –grab content you need and snap back

future vibe directions novel interaction and visualization techniques that scale from small to very large displays continued evaluation and iteration of designs from a user-centered perspective more focus on collaboration and group awareness with large displays more information:

thank you!

multiblending problem with traditional alpha blending: is this bush in palette or background? solution multiblending: glass palette is clearly distinguished from background photo & background more recognizable solution multiblending blend based on perception oriented feature classes (CIE Lab color + edges) to preserve feature in one layer eliminate that feature in other layers example “glass palettes” (see above) problems with traditional “alpha blending” loss of contrast for both layers colors are not true anymore interference makes it unclear which layer a feature belongs to user study with multiblending: foreground and background more recognizable

meeting support: wincutswincuts microsoft supports: –individual user productivity (eg. word, excel, …) –disseminating information (eg. powerpoint, sharepoint, …) –communication (eg. outlook, MSN messenger, …) –distance collaboration (eg. Netmeeting, Livemeeting, …) but what about co-located collaborative work? –people bring different expertise and information on personal devices to meetings and need to share today’s model is broken—only one person gets to display entire desktop at a time (for better or worse) or, must share applications and files with others –what about private information? what about ui that should be scaled for the task at hand?