We are quickly passing through the historical moment when people work in front of a single computer, dominated by a small CRT and focused on tasks involving only local information. Networked computers are becoming ubiquitous and are playing increasingly significant roles in our lives and in the basic infrastructures of science, business, and social interaction. For human-computer interaction to advance in the new millennium we need to better understand the emerging dynamic of interaction in which the focus task is no longer confined to the desktop but reaches into a complex networked world of information and computer-mediated interactions. We think the theory of distributed cognition has a special role to play in understanding interactions between people and technologies, for its focus has always been on whole environments: what we really do in them and how we coordinate our activity in them. Distributed cognition provides a radical reorientation of how to think about designing and supporting human-computer interaction. As a theory it is specifically tailored to understanding interactions among people and technologies. In this article we propose distributed cognition as a new foundation for human-computer interaction, sketch an integrated research framework, and use selections from our earlier work to suggest how this framework can provide new opportunities in the design of digital work materials.

We introduce a model for supporting collaborative work between people that are physically close to each other. We call this model Single Display Groupware (SDG). In this paper, we describe this model, comparing it to more traditional remote collaboration. We describe the requirements that SDG places on computer technology, and our understanding of the benefits and costs of SDG systems. Finally, we describe a prototype SDG system that we built and the results of a usability test we ran with 60 elementary school children. Keywords CSCW, Single Display Groupware, children, educational applications, input devices, Pad++, KidPad. INTRODUCTION In the early 1970's, researchers at Xerox PARC created an atmosphere in which they lived and worked with technology of the future. When the world's first personal computer, the Alto, was invented, it had only a single keyboard and mouse. This fundamental design legacy has carried through to nearly all modern computer systems. Although networks have...

In this paper we investigate the use of scene graphs as a general approach for implementing two-dimensional (2D) graphical applications, and in particular Zoomable User Interfaces (ZUIs). Scene graphs are typically found in three-dimensional (3D) graphics packages such as Sun's Java3D and SGI's OpenInventor. They have not been widely adopted by 2D graphical user interface toolkits. To explore the effectiveness of scene graph techniques, we have developed Jazz, a general-purpose 2D scene graph toolkit. Jazz is implemented in Java using Java2D, and runs on all platforms that support Java 2. This paper describes Jazz and the lessons we learned using Jazz for ZUIs. It also discusses how 2D scene graphs can be applied to other application areas. Keywords Zoomable User Interfaces (ZUIs), Animation, Graphics, User Interface Management Systems (UIMS), Pad++, Jazz. INTRODUCTION Today's Graphical User Interface (GUI) toolkits contain a wide range of built-in user interface objects (also kno...

In this paper, we analyze toolkit designs for building graphical applications with rich user interfaces, comparing polylithic and monolithic toolkit-based solutions. Polylithic toolkits encourage extension by composition and follow a design philosophy similar to 3D scene graphs supported by toolkits including Java3D and OpenInventor. Monolithic toolkits, on the other hand, encourage extension by inheritance, and are more akin to 2D Graphical User Interface toolkits such as Swing or MFC. We describe Jazz (a polylithic toolkit) and Piccolo (a monolithic toolkit), each of which we built to support interactive 2D structured graphics applications in general, and Zoomable User Interface applications in particular. We examine the trade offs of each approach in terms of performance, memory requirements, and programmability. We conclude that a polylithic approach is most suitable for toolkit builders, visual design software where code is automatically generated, and application builders where there is much customization of the toolkit.

We propose a navigation technique for browsing large documents that integrates rate-based scrolling with automatic zooming. The view automatically zooms out when the user scrolls rapidly so that the perceptual scrolling speed in screen space remains constant. As a result, the user can efficiently and smoothly navigate through a large document without becoming disoriented by extremely fast visual flow. By incorporating semantic zooming techniques the user can smoothly access a global overview of the document during rate-based scrolling. We implemented several prototype systems, including a web browser, map viewer, image browser, and dictionary viewer. An informal usability study suggests that for a document browsing task, most subjects prefer automatic zooming and the technique exhibits approximately equal performance time to scroll bars , suggesting that automatic zooming is a helpful alternative totraditional scrolling when the zoomed out view provides appropriate visual cues. KE...

In today’s homes and schools, children are emerging as frequent and experienced users of technology [3, 14]. As this trend continues, it becomes increasingly important to ask if we are fulfilling the technology needs of our children. To answer this question, I have developed a research approach that enables young children to have a voice throughout the technology development process. In this paper, the techniques of cooperative inquiry will be described along with a theoretical framework that situates this work in the HCI literature. Two examples of technology resulting from this approach will be presented, along with a brief discussion on the design-centered learning of team researchers using cooperative inquiry. Keywords Children, design techniques, educational applications, cooperative design, participatory design, cooperative inquiry, intergenerational design team, KidPad, PETS. CHILDREN AS OUR RESEARCH PARTNERS Today’s technologies are becoming a critical part of our children’s daily lives [3, 9, 14]. From school learning experiences to after-school play, technology is changing the way children live and learn. In fact, children have been found to be an important new consumer group that must be satisfied as technology users [17]. In recent years, numerous methodologies have been developed that bring technology users into the development process. Users have been described as active partners [6, 16, 29], inspectors or testers [24, 25], or research participants to be observed and/or interviewed [5, 13, 18]. Thanks to user input, technology can be shaped and changed in ways that may be meaningful and useful for future technology users. While user involvement is well understood as important to the technology research and

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We present a task-based taxonomy of navigation techniques for 3D virtual environments, used to categorize existing techniques, drive exploration of the design space, and inspire new techniques. We briefly discuss several new techniques, and describe in detail one new technique, Speed-coupled Flying with Orbiting. This technique couples control of movement speed to camera height and tilt, allowing users to seamlessly transition between local environment-views and global overviews. Users can also orbit specific objects for inspection. Results from two competitive user studies suggest users performed better with Speed-coupled Flying with Orbiting over alternatives, with performance also enhanced by a large display.

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.

The literature on information visualization establishes the usability of interfaces with an overview of the information space, but for zoomable user interfaces, results are mixed. We compare zoomable user interfaces with and without an overview to understand the navigation patterns and usability of these interfaces. Thirty-two subjects solved navigation and browsing tasks on two maps. We found no difference between interfaces in subjects ’ ability to solve tasks correctly. Eighty percent of the subjects preferred the interface with an overview, stating that it supported navigation and helped keep track of their position on the map. However, subjects were faster with the interface without an overview when using one of the two maps. We conjecture that this difference was due to the organization of that map in multiple levels, which rendered the overview unnecessary by providing richer navigation cues through semantic zooming. The combination of that map and the interface without an overview also improved subjects ’ recall of objects on the map. Subjects who switched between the overview and the detail windows used more time, suggesting that integration of overview and detail windows adds complexity and requires additional mental and motor effort.