Software visualization is the use of interactive computer graphics, typography, graphic design, animation, and cinematography to enhance the interface between the software engineer or the computer science student and their programs. Although several taxonomies of software visualization have been proposed, they use few dimensions and do not span the space of important distinctions between systems. We attempt to fill this gap in the literature by proposing a novel and systematic taxonomy of six areas making up thirty characteristic features of software visualization technology. The taxonomy is presented and illustrated in terms of its application to seven systems of historic importance and technical interest.

User interfaces are often based on static presentations, a model ill suited for conveying change. Consequently, events on the screen frequently startle and confuse users. Cartoon animation, in contrast, is exceedingly successful at engaging its audience; even the most bizarre events are easily comprehended. The Self user interface has served as a testbed for the application of cartoon animation techniques as a means of making the interface easier to understand and more pleasant to use. Attention to timing and transient detail allows Self objects to move solidly. Use of cartoon-style motion blur allows Self objects to move quickly and still maintain their comprehensibility. Self objects arrive and depart smoothly, without sudden materializations and disappearances, and they rise to the front of overlapping objects smoothly through the use of dissolve. Anticipating motion with a small contrary motion and pacing the middle of transitions faster than the endpoints results in smoother and c...

As algorithm animation systems become more widely available and easy to use, instructors must decide whether to utilize these systems to assist their teaching. Although these systems have generated excitement and interest in both teachers and students, little empirical evidence exists to promote their use. This article describes a study involving the use of algorithm animations in classroom and laboratory settings. Results indicated that allowing students to create their own examples in a laboratory session led to higher accuracy on the post-test examination of understanding of the algorithm as compared to students who viewed prepared examples or no laboratory examples.

We examine how animating a viewpoint change in a spatial information system affects a user’s ability to build a mental map of the information in the space. We found that animation improves users ' ability to reconstruct the information space, with no penalty on task performance time. We believe that this study provides strong evidence for adding animated transitions in many applications with fixed spatial data where the user navigates around the data space.

This research focuses on the use of hand drawn marks as a human-computer input technique. Drawing a mark is an efficient command input technique in many situations. However, marks are not intrinsically self-explanatory as are other interactive techniques such as buttons and menus. This research develops and evaluates an interaction technique called marking menus which integrates menus and marks such that both self-explanation and efficient interaction can be provided. A marking menu allows a user to perform a menu selection by either popping up a radial menu and then selecting an item, or by drawing a straight mark in the direction of the desired menu item. Drawing a mark avoids popping up the menu. Marking menus can also be hierarchic. In this case, hierarchic radial menus and “zig-zag ” marks are used. Marking menus are based on three design principles: self-revelation, guidance and rehearsal. Self-revelation means a marking menu reveals to a user what functions or items are available. Guidance means a marking menu guides a user in selecting an item. Rehearsal means that the guidance

In order to enable the search and retrieval of video from large archives, we need a representation language for video content. Although some aspects of video can be automatically parsed, a sufficient representation requires that video be annotated. We discuss the design of a video representation language with special attention to the issue of creating a global, reusable video archive. Our prototype system, Media Streams, enables users to create multi-layered, iconic annotations of streams of video data. Within Media Streams, the organization and categories of the Icon Space allow users to browse and compound over 3500 iconic primitives by means of a cascading hierarchical structure that supports compounding icons across branches of the hierarchy. A Media Time Line enables users to visualize, browse, annotate, and retrieve video content. The challenges of creating a representation of human action in video are discussed in detail, with focus on the effect of the syntax of video sequences on the semantics of video shots. 1 Introduction: The Need

We introduce Side Views, a user interface mechanism that provides on-demand, persistent, and dynamic previews of commands. Side Views are designed to explicitly support the practices and needs of expert users engaged in openended tasks. In this paper, we summarize results from field studies of expert users that motivated this work, then discuss the design of Side Views in detail. We show how Side Views ’ design affords their use as tools for clarifying, comparing, and contrasting commands; generating alternative visualizations; experimenting without modifying the original data (i.e., “what-if ” tools); and as tools that support the serendipitous discovery of viable alternatives. We then convey lessons learned from implementing Side Views in two sample applications, a rich text editor and an

Visualizing information in user interfaces to complex, large-scale systems is difficult due to an enormous amount of dynamic data distributed across multiple displays. While graphical representation techniques can reduce some of the cognitive overhead associated with comprehension, current interfaces suffer from the over-use of such representation techniques and exceed the human’s perceptual capacity to efficiently interpret them. New display dimensions are required to support the user in information visualization. Three major issues which are problematic in complex system UI design are identified: representing the nature of change, supporting the cognitive integration of data across disparate displays, and conveying the nature of relationships between data and/ or events. Advances in technology have made animation a viable alternative to static representations. Motion holds promise as a perceptually rich and efficient display dimension but little is known about its attributes for information display. This paper proposes that motion may prove useful in visualizing complex information because of its preattentive and interpretative perceptual properties. A review of animation in current user interface and visualization design and research indicates that, while there is strong intuition about the “usefulness ” of motion to communicate, there

A common task at almost any computer interface is that of searching for documents, which GUIs typically represent with icons. Oddly, little research has been done on the processes underlying icon search. This paper outlines the factors involved in icon search and proposes a model of the process. An experiment was conducted which suggests that the proposed model is sound, and that the most important factor in searching for files is the type of icons used. In general, simple icons (those discriminable based on a few features) seem to help users, while complex icons are no better than simple rectangles.

We describe a new interaction technique, called a spotlight, for directing the visual attention of an audience when viewing data or presentations on large wall-sized displays. A spotlight is simply a region of the display where the contents are displayed normally while the remainder of the display is somewhat darkened. In this paper we define the behavior of spotlights, show unique affordances of the technique, and discuss design characteristics. We also report on experiments that show the benefit of using the spotlight a large display and standard desktop configuration. Our results suggest that the spotlight is preferred over the standard cursor and outperforms it by a factor of 3.4 on a wall-sized display.