Window-based Interaction Styles Dr.s Barnes and Leventhal

Reference  Chapter 8,9, Top-ten Blunders by Visual Designers.

Windows-based Interaction Styles   Windows allow the user to interact with multiple sources of information at the same time, as if he/she had multiple output displays of different sizes.

Situations Which May Call for Windows  Novice users  Compartmentalizing task inside of visual boundary may reduce cognitive workload BUT having too many (especially overlapping) windows or windows which seem to pop-up for no reason will be confusing and distracting and will inhibit the novice’s ability to encode in their mental model the sequence of user actions necessary to manipulate the windows.  Users with high levels of discretion  May benefit from multiple representations of the same task  Users with lots of knowledge  May use windowed systems to display and interact with multiple tasks at once.  Tasks with multiple representations  Tasks with multiple representations may be well-suited to multiple views. For example, in a data analysis problem it may be useful to see a graph in one window and an equivalent mathematical statement of the model in another.  Frequent tasks  For frequent tasks, it may be useful to keep the task visible in a separate window.

General Issues for Windowed Interactions.   How the use of limited display space can be optimized.   How many windows to permit.   Are the windows tiled or overlapping? Instone, Mynatt and Leventhal (1993) suggest that users are less distracted when windows are tiled than when they are overlapping. If windows overlapped, does the interaction provide a tool to automatically tile them?   How are the windows activated? Does a user interaction activate them, or do they simply “pop-up”.   How users can use multiple sources on screen at once to carry out a task. That is how to handle concurrency.   How users may be able to interact with any one of several views of task   How the use of one set of input devices for different purposes can be coordinated across windows.   Note that the windows will be housing some other kind of interaction style, the designer will need to determine WHAT goes into the window.

Functions/uses of Windows - why use Windowed Interactions   Rapid access to more information than is possible with a single screen.   Access to multiple sources of information   Permit combining of multiple sources of information.   Independent control of multiple programs

Uses of Windows (2)   Reminding.   Different windows may set the "mode" of the interaction style. in another window.   Windows can display multiple representations of the same task.

Window Management Systems   Window managers are software systems that control the refresh, placement and “look and feel” of windows.   Common tasks that window management   systems perform.   managing input   changing window focus   managing single windows   managing multiple windows   managing windows for CSCW

Designing your interaction for your project  Now we will work on designing your interactions for you project.  In some ways this is skipping around because we still have some interaction styles to learn about and some more guidelines to learn about (Chapters 8 and 9)  We are going to discuss a little about visual design from the end of Chapter 9 so that you have some basis for making decisions about visual design.  Recall that you need to build a high level design for your overall interaction. Then you need to design each individual screen.  Use situational variables to help you pick an interaction style or styles. Your context and user profile specifications will tell you the values of these.  Justify your choices (in writing) in terms of your situational variables  Use the interaction style-specific guidelines, in combination with what we learn about visual design to design your individual screens. If you specified some usability requirements, be sure to keep these in mind.  Each task in your task analysis specification should have a corresponding user action or user actions, so you should use your task analysis specification as a check off to insure that you do not forget anything.

Visual Design   go over examples, Powell, 10 deadly errors

Example Design  Chapter 10

Summary   Show comparison slides