think-cell technical report TC2003/01 A GUI-based Interaction ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

4.1 A New Approach to Slide Layout INTERACTION CONCEPT Another user request that was revealed by the field study (Chap. 2) cannot easily be integrated into the smart grid concept: So-called stickers are visual elements that appear on a couple of slides throughout a presentation, always in the same size, position and style. In Solo [Axo] there is a feature called named objects that explicitly supports this concept. It will be up to future work to represent the sticker concept with the smart grid approach. 4.1.3 Implementing Esthetics by Rules The argument for a substantial performance gain by computer supported layout says, first, that it is easier and faster for the user to specify abstract layout intentions as opposed to concrete pixel positions. Second, the argument assumes that the translation from an abstract specification to a concrete layout can be done by an automated process and third, that on a recent personal computer this process runs fast enough to support the user interactively. An abstract layout specification allows for a much faster input, because it carries much less information than an exact, pixel-based specification. As a consequence, an abstract specification typically is an underspecification of the desired outcome. Just as in inter-human communication, the pure user input leaves room for ambiguities that must be resolved. In inter-human communication, ambiguities are resolved by supplementary input from other media, namely gestures and tone, and by conventions. Conventions go a long way to resolve ambiguities in the literal information, because by convention we have certain preconceptions about the meaning of a piece of information depending on the situation, the relationship between the speaker and the listener, and so forth. Similarly, in computer supported layout conventions help to resolve ambiguities in the user input. More technically speaking, the constraints implicitly given by the smart grid and the constraints explicitly specified by the user are supplemented with a collection of generic constraints that comprise conventions – or rules – about esthetic layout and corporate design (see knowledge base in Fig. 11). Those generic constraints bridge the gap between the abstract and underspecifying user input and a concrete layout. The actual definition of generic constraints must come from expert knowledge as well as from studying a substantial set of sample slides. The constraints must be weighted and the formulation of the constraints as well as their weights must be carefully tuned to the constraint solving algorithm. Those details are beyond the scope of my thesis, but to fortify the feasibility of the smart grid approach and to give an impression of what conventions in computer supported layout may look like, I propose some rules for this purpose. This listing of rules is certainly incomplete, inaccurate and open to discussion. • A slide consists of static objects such as headline and page number, and a set of dynamic objects, the body. 40
4.1 A New Approach to Slide Layout INTERACTION CONCEPT • The body of a slide is centered between the static slide margins, which are part of the master layout. • Spacing between elements in the body is uniformly distributed; when there are only few elements on a slide, spacing is larger than when there are a lot of elements. • Elements that contain text or data graphs have a preferred aspect ratio of 4:3. • Text wrapping should be avoided, if possible; any wrapped line of text should at least contain three words. Line wrapping should avoid syllabication. If necessary, long words may be wrapped but correct syllabication must be re- spected (in contrast to what plain PowerPoint does). • A single line of text should be centered in its containing element; multi-line text should always be left-aligned. • A slide should contain as few different font styles as possible, preferably no more than three different font sizes plus bold and italic. Static elements like headings and page numbers must have the same font size and style throughout an entire presentation. • Font sizes should default to 14 pt. For large chunks of text that must be wrapped into multiple lines, text size may be decreased to 12 pt or even 10 pt. No text must ever be smaller than 10 pt. Small chunks of emphasized text may be as big as 18 pt. 4.1.4 Review of the User Feedback The smart grid approach is strongly supported by the qualitative results from the user study (Sect. 2.1). Figure 14 shows an excerpt from the user ratings of the deficits in the Microsoft PowerPoint user interface. Assuming that the smart grid automatically and instantly applies adequate proportions and perfectly aligns all shapes on a slide, a large fraction of the reported problems would be solved or become irrelevant: • The regular grid (items 8 B1 and B2) and the guidelines (item B3) are completely replaced by the smart grid. Smart gridlines emerge whenever a shape is placed. Shapes and smart gridlines can be snapped to other smart gridlines. Smart gridlines move autonomously to adjust the over-all layout. Alternatively, they can also be moved manually just as usual guidelines. Vis- ibility of smart gridlines is improved over the hardly visible PowerPoint grid (item B4). • Any tasks related to tabular layout (item D) are easily solved with the smart grid, because the smart grid itself is simply a generalization of a tabular layout with rows and columns. 8 Item numbers refer to the detailed description of Microsoft PowerPoint deficits in section 2.1.5. 41
Page 1 and 2: think-cell technical report TC2003/
Page 3 and 4: Contents List of Figures 5 1 Introd
Page 5 and 6: List of Figures 1 The consultant’
Page 7 and 8: 1 Introduction INTRODUCTION “Layo
Page 9 and 10: 2 Field Study FIELD STUDY Jeff Hawk
Page 11 and 12: 2.1 Qualitative Aspects FIELD STUDY
Page 19 and 20: 2.2 Quantitative Aspects FIELD STUD
Page 25 and 26: 3 State of the Art STATE OF THE ART
Page 27 and 28: 3.1 User Interfaces for Layout Spec
Page 29 and 30: 3.2 Computer Supported Layout STATE
Page 31 and 32: 3.2 Computer Supported Layout STATE
Page 33 and 34: 3.3 State of the Art - Résumé STA
Page 35 and 36: 4.1 A New Approach to Slide Layout
Page 37 and 38: 4.1 A New Approach to Slide Layout
Page 39: 4.1 A New Approach to Slide Layout
Page 43 and 44: 4.2 Interaction Toolbox INTERACTION
Page 53 and 54: 4.3 Specifying the User Interface I
Page 69 and 70: 5 Implementation IMPLEMENTATION The
Page 71 and 72: 5.1 Program Architecture IMPLEMENTA
Page 77 and 78: 5.2 An Application of Dynamic Progr
Page 83 and 84: 6 Evaluation EVALUATION In this cha
Page 85 and 86: 6.2 Case Study EVALUATION presented
Page 87 and 88: 6.2 Case Study EVALUATION AÖGHKÖ
Page 89 and 90: 7.2 Résumé CONCLUSION User Studie
Page 91 and 92:
References REFERENCES [Adoa] Adobe
Page 93 and 94:
REFERENCES [Hur78] A. Hurlburt. The
show all

think-cell technical report TC2003/01 A GUI-based Interaction ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?