The goal of the research described in this paper is to develop an application-independent presentation tool that automatically designs effective graphical presentations (such as bar charts, scatter plots, and connected graphs) of relational information. Two problems are raised by this goal: The codifi-cation of graphic design criteria in a form that can be used by the presentation tool, and the generation of a wide variety of designs so that the presentation tool can accommodate a wide variety of information. The approach described in this paper is based on the view that graphical presentations are sentences of graphical languages. The graphic design issues are codified as expressiveness and effectiveness criteria for graphical languages. Expressiveness criteria determine whether a graphical language can express the desired information. Effectiveness criteria determine whether a graphical language exploits the capabilities of the output medium and the human visual system. A wide variety of designs can be systematically generated by using a composition algebra that composes a small set of primitive graphical languages. Artificial intelligence techniques are used to implement a prototype presentation tool called APT (A Presentation Tool), which is based on the composition algebra and the graphic design criteria.

Comics have a rich visual vocabulary, and people find them appealing. They are also an effective form of communication. We have built a system, called Comic Chat, that represents on-line communications in the form of comics. Comic Chat automates numerous aspects of comics generation, including balloon construction and layout, the placement and orientation of comic characters, the default selection of character gestures and expressions, the incorporation of semantic panel elements, and the choice of zoom factor for the virtual camera. This paper describes the mechanisms that Comic Chat uses to perform this automation, as well as novel aspects of the program’s user interface. Comic Chat is a working program, allowing groups of people to communicate over the Internet. It has several advantages over other graphical chat programs, including the availability of a graphical history, and a dynamic graphical presentation.

Currently, building a user interface involves creating a large procedural program. Modelbased programming provides an alternative new paradigm. In the model-based paradigm, developers create a declarative model that describes the tasks that users are expected to accomplish with a system, the functional capabilities of a system, the style and requirements of the interface, the characteristics and preferences of the users, and the I/O techniques supported by the delivery platform. Based on the model, a much smaller procedural program then determines the behavior of the system. There are several advantages to this approach. The declarative model is a common representation that tools can reason about, enabling the construction of tools that automate various aspects of interface design, that assist system builders in the creation of the model, that automatically provide context sensitive help and other run-time assistance to users. The common model also allows the tools that operate on it t...

In next-generation virtual 3D simulation, training, and entertainment environments, intelligent visualization interfaces must respond to user-specified viewing requests so users can follow salient points of the action and monitor the relative locations of objects. Users should be able to indicate which object(s) to view, how each should be viewed, cinematic style and pace, and how to respond when a single satisfactory view is not possible. When constraints fail, weak constraints can be relaxed or multi-shot solutions can be displayed in sequence or as composite shots with simultaneous viewports. To address these issues, we have developed CONSTRAINTCAM, a real-time camera visualization interface for dynamic 3D worlds. It has been studied in an interactive testbed in which users can issue viewing goals to monitor multiple autonomous characters navigating through a virtual cityscape. CONSTRAINT~AM’S real-time performance in this testbed is encouraging.

We present design principles for creating effective assembly instructions and a system that is based on these principles. The principles are drawn from cognitive psychology research which investigated people’s conceptual models of assembly and effective methods to visually communicate assembly information. Our system is inspired by earlier work in robotics on assembly planning and in visualization on automated presentation design. Although other systems have considered presentation and planning independently, we believe it is necessary to address the two problems simultaneously in order to create effective assembly instructions. We describe the algorithmic techniques used to produce assembly instructions given object geometry, orientation, and optional grouping and ordering constraints on the object’s parts. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to produce aesthetically pleasing and easy to follow instructions for many everyday objects.

Graphical interfaces typically provide their users with little idea of a session’s history, except insofar as it is reflected in the current state of the system. If undo and redo commands are provided, they are often the only way to review the actions performed, cycling through them in sequence. We introduce the notion of an editable graphical history that can allow the user to review and modify the actions performed with a graphical interface. We have designed a testbed system that creates a series of automatically-generated panels that depict in chronological order the important events in the history of a user’s session with Chimera, a graphical editor. Our system uses heuristics to determine the contents of each panel and the actions that it illustrates. The user may scroll through the sequence of panels, reviewing actions at different levels of detail, and selectively undoing, modifying, and redoing previous actions.

Abstract. Altering the viewing parameters of a 3D object results in computergraphics images of varying quality. One aspect of image quality is the composition of the image. While the esthetic properties of an image are subjective, someheuristics used by artists to create images can be approximated quantitatively. We present an algorithm based on heuristic compositional rules for finding the for-mat, viewpoint, and layout for an image of a 3D object. Our system computes viewing parameters automatically or allows a user to explicitly manipulate them.

In 3D interactive ction systems, a virtual camera must \ lm " the behaviors of multiple autonomous characters as they unpredictably interact with one another, are modi ed by the viewer, and manipulate artifacts in 3D worlds with complex scene geometries. It must continuously plan camera movements to clearly shoot the salient visual features of each relevant character. To address these issues, we have developed a 3D interactive ction system with a narrative planner that, together with a bank of autonomous character directors, creates cinematic goals for a constraintbased realtime 3D virtual cinematography planner. As interactive narratives unfold, a cinematic goal selector creates view constraints to lm the most salient activities performed by thecharacters. These constraints are then passed to a camera planner, which employs a partial constraintbased approach to compute the position and orientation of the virtual camera. This framework has been implemented in a prototype 3D interactive ction system, Cops&Robbers, a testbed with multiple characters interacting in an intricate cityscape.

We present the concept of an editable graphical history that allows the user to review and modify the actions performed with a graphical user interface. Using a pictorial metaphor borrowed from comic strips, an editable graphical history consists of a series of panels that depict in chronological order the important events in the history of a user's session. We discuss the visual language used in editable graphical histories, and describe Chimera, a graphical editor that generates these histories automatically. The user may scroll through the sequence of panels, reviewing actions at different levels of detail, and selectively undoing, modifying, and redoing previous actions. Chimera's editable graphical histories are constructed from parts of the editor window, the editor control panel, and the editor's pop up menus. Panels indicate both the objects that are modified and the actions performed on them. We describe the heuristics used to determine the objects depicted in each panel, the ...

Graphical editing, like many applications facilitated by computers, often involves repetitive tasks. To reduce repetition, programmers can write procedures to automate these tasks, however most users do not know how to program,