This paper introduces a new type of interface for 3D drawings that improves the usability of gestural interfaces and augments typical command-based modeling systems. In our suggestive interface, the user gives hints about a desired operation to the system by highlighting related geometric components in the scene. The system then infers possible operations based on the hints and presents the results of these operations as small thumbnails. The user completes the editing operation simply by clicking on the desired thumbnail. The hinting mechanism lets the user specify geometric relations among graphical components in the scene, and the multiple thumbnail suggestions make it possible to define many operations with relatively few distinct hint patterns. The suggestive interface system is implemented as a set of suggestion engines working in parallel, and is easily extended by adding customized engines. Our prototype 3D drawing system, Chateau, shows that a suggestive interface can effectively support construction of various 3D drawings.

We present SketchREAD, a multi-domain sketch recognition engine capable of recognizing freely hand-drawn diagrammatic sketches. Current computer sketch recognition systems are difficult to construct, and either are fragile or accomplish robustness by severely limiting the designer’s drawing freedom. Our system can be applied to a variety of domains by providing structural descriptions of the shapes in that domain; no training data or programming is necessary. Robustness to the ambiguity and uncertainty inherent in complex, freely-drawn sketches is achieved through the use of context. The system uses context to guide the search for possible interpretations and uses a novel form of dynamically constructed Bayesian networks to evaluate these interpretations. This process allows the system to recover from low-level recognition errors (e.g., a line misclassified as an arc) that would otherwise result in domain level recognition errors. We evaluated SketchREAD on real sketches in two domains— family trees and circuit diagrams—and found that in both domains the use of context to reclassify low-level shapes significantly reduced recognition error over a baseline system that did not reinterpret low-level classifications. We also discuss the system’s potential role in sketch-based user interfaces.

Speech-based user interfaces are growing in popularity. Unfortunately, the technology expertise required to build speech UIs precludes many individuals from participating in the speech interface design process. Furthermore, the time and knowledge costs of building even simple speech systems make it difficult for designers to iteratively design speech UIs. SUEDE, the speech interface prototyping tool we describe in this paper, allows designers to rapidly create prompt/response speech interfaces. It offers an electronically supported Wizard of Oz (WOz) technique that captures test data, allowing designers to analyze the interface after testing. This informal tool enables speech user interface designers, even non-experts, to quickly create, test, and analyze speech user interface prototypes.

We have created and tested Tahuti, a dual-view sketch recognition environment for class diagrams in UML. The system is based on a multi-layer recognition framework which recognizes multi-stroke objects by their geometrical properties allowing users the freedom to draw naturally as they would on paper rather than requiring the user to draw the objects in a pre-defined manner. Users can draw and edit while viewing either their original strokes or the interpreted version of their strokes engendering user-autonomy in sketching. The experiments showed that users preferred Tahuti to a paint program and to Rational Rose because it combined the ease of drawing found in a paint program with the ease of editing available in a UML editor.

Because of its promise of natural interaction, recognition is coming into its own as a mainstream technology for use with computers. Both commercial and research applications are beginning to use it extensively. However the errors made by recognizers can be quite costly, and this is increasingly becoming a focus for researchers. We present a survey of existing error correction techniques in the user interface. These mediation techniques most commonly fall into one of two strategies, repetition and choice. Based on the needs uncovered by this survey, we have developed OOPS, a toolkit that supports resolution of input ambiguity through mediation. This paper describes four new interaction techniques built using OOPS, and the toolkit mechanisms required to build them. These interaction techniques each address problems not directly handled by standard approaches to mediation, and can all be re-used in a variety of settings.

Interest in pen-based user interfaces is growing rapidly. One potentially useful feature of pen-based user interfaces is gestures, that is, a mark or stroke that causes a command to execute. Unfortunately, it is difficult to design gestures that are easy 1) for computers to recognize and 2) for humans to learn and remember. To investigate these problems, we built a prototype tool for designing gesture sets. An experiment was then performed to gain insight into the gesture design process and to evaluate the tool. The experiment confirmed that gesture design is very difficult and suggested several ways in which current tools can be improved. The most important of these improvements is to make the tools more active and provide more guidance for designers. This paper describes the gesture design tool, the experiment, and its results. Keywords pen-based user interface, PDA, user study, gesture, UI design INTRODUCTION This work explores the process of gesture design with the goal of impr...

Recognition technologies are being used extensively in both the commercial and research worlds. But recognizers are still error-prone, and this results in performance problems and brittle dialogues. These problems are a barrier to acceptance and usefulness of recognition systems. Better interfaces to recognition systems, which can help to reduce the burden of recognition errors, are difficult to build because of lack of knowledge about the ambiguity inherent in recognition. We have extended a user interface toolkit in order to model and to provide structured support for ambiguity at the input event level [7]. This makes it possible to build re-usable interface components for resolving ambiguity and dealing with recognition errors. These interfaces can help to reduce the negative effects of recognition errors. By providing these components at a toolkit level, we make it easier for application writers to provide good support for error handling. And we can explore new types of interfaces for resolving a more varied range of ambiguity.

To create an innovative interactive multimedia application, a multimedia designer needs to rapidly explore numerous behavioral design ideas early in the design process, as creating innovative behavior is the cornerstone of creating innovative multimedia. Current tools and techniques do not support a designer’s need for early behavior exploration, limiting her ability to rapidly explore and effectively communicate behavioral design ideas. To address this need, we have developed a sketch-based, interactive multimedia storyboard tool that uses a designer’s ink strokes and textual annotations as an input design vocabulary. By operationalizing this vocabulary, the tool transforms an otherwise static sketch into a working example. The behavioral sketch can be quickly edited using gestures and an expressive visual language. By enabling a designer to explore and communicate behavioral design ideas using working examples early in the design process, our tool facilitates the creation of a more effective, compelling, and entertaining multimedia application.

We present a visual approach to layout static components of user interfaces as hand-drawn compositions of simple geometric shapes, based on sketch recognition. We have defined a visual grammar using drawing data from target users, where we tried to figure out how people sketch interfaces and what combinations of shapes are more commonly used to define widgets. From these we built our grammar and implemented a prototype, JavaSketchIt, that allows creating user interfaces through hand-drawn geometric shapes, identified by a gesture recognizer. This prototype generates a Java interface, whose layout can be beautified using an a posteriori set of grammar rules (e.g. to align and group objects).

The Insight Lab is an immersive environment designed to support teams who create design requirements documents. Requirements emerge from a deep understanding of a problem domain, which is achieved through in-depth analysis of large amounts of qualitative data. The goal of the Lab is to facilitate the data analysis process through the seamless interaction of computer-based technologies with objects in the environment. Team members can use paper and whiteboards to sketch, annotate, and display their analysis work. Barcodes are used to link papers and whiteboard printouts to the multimedia data stored in the computer. Keywords Interaction design, collaboration, analysis methods, video analysis, hybrid paper electronic interfaces, digital documents, group memory, barcode technology INTRODUCTION Identifying and developing the design requirements for a new system, service or product is a complex problem. Designers need to understand and organize vast amounts of qualitative data collect...