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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

5.2 An Application of Dynamic Programming IMPLEMENTATION 5.2.4 Advanced Gridline Matching Considerations In practice, there are a lot more issues involved with gridline matching than the basic matching discussed in the previous sections. For example, which exactly is the list of destination gridlines? Depending on the user input, some subset of the available gridlines from the destination slide must be chosen. The precise semantics of mouse input – typically a point or a rectangle – must be defined. In case of a single point, it is unclear where the input of destination gridlines stops. One possible implementation would take all available destination gridlines and treat the entire last row of the cost matrix as valid solutions. Figure 46 exemplifies the optimal solution in this case, where the minimum cost value from the last row of the matrix is taken as the starting point for the reconstruction. SOURCE DEST Dest. Source s 1 s 2 s 3 s 4 s 5 d 1 d 2 d 3 d 4 d 5 d 6 1 2 3 4 5 Solution MergeGridlines(…) SOURCE DEST (a) Gridlines being matched 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 SOURCE 7 SOURCE 11 SOURCE 26 SOURCE 58 DEST 20 SOURCE DEST IDENTIFY IDENTIFY DEST DEST 96 131 81 97 105 139 s 1 s 2 s 3 s 4 s 5 d 1 d 2 Solution DEST DEST DEST DEST DEST 23 77 165 317 428 SOURCE IDENTIFY DEST DEST IDENTIFY DEST 29 31 46 59 178 210 DEST SOURCE DEST SOURCE IDENTIFY IDENTIFY 18 35 41 61 74 199 SOURCE DEST IDENTIFY SOURCE SOURCE DEST 24 29 55 79 115 171 SOURCE SOURCE DEST IDENTIFY DEST DEST 70 89 133 83 109 147 (b) Optimal path reconstruction Figure 46: Matching a dynamic number of destination gridlines IDENTIFY 134 Depending on the interpretation of the mouse pointer location as a reference point for the insertion, it might be necessary to run the optimization algorithm in two directions. In any case, gridlines must be matched for both dimensions, vertically and horizontally. This adds a new dimension to the complexity of the matching problem: The relationships between source and destination shapes that are established in one dimension may have an influence on the costs calculated for the other dimension. My approach to this interdependency is to iteratively try a small number of different solutions in either dimension and then decide for the ultimate best guess. This approach does not always yield the actual optimum, but it has the advantage to find a “good” solution in polynomial time. 82
6 Evaluation EVALUATION In this chapter I endeavor to evaluate the potential impact of the smart grid concept in general and of my implementation of a user interface in particular. First, I present an interpretation of the measurements taken in the field study (Chap. 2). This leads to an estimation of the over-all performance gain for the target user group. Subsequently, the actual performance of my prototype’s user interface is measured for a sample of real life slide layouts and is compared to the working speed of an expert using plain PowerPoint. 6.1 Estimating the Potential Speed-Up Based on the four partitions of PowerPoint related activities (Sect. 2.2.1), it is assumed that there is no way to speed up text entry or custom drawings. On the other hand, my thesis claims that there is potential to significantly improve chart design and slide layout. In this section I estimate the potential speed-up for the latter activities and extrapolate the results to the entire PowerPoint-related workflow. 6.1.1 Speedup for Chart Design The think-cell add-in for efficient chart design was in beta state at the time of this writing. This software enhances PowerPoint with explicit support for frequently used chart types, which are not supported by Microsoft Graph. Furthermore, it also offers additional UI widgets for direct manipulation. Direct manipulation of charts, which allows user interaction with the graphical chart representation and feeds changes back into the data table, is not provided by Microsoft Graph. Although efficient chart design is not the focus of my thesis, it is an important aspect of PowerPoint usage in business consultancies and exemplifies the speed-up potential of carefully designed user interfaces for computer supported layout. A working prototype for waterfall charts served for a number of case studies that gave an impression of the possible performance gains. The results are impressive. A non-trivial chart that takes about 12 min to be created by an expert using plain PowerPoint, can be done in about 2 min with the think-cell chart add-in. This translates to a speed-up factor of 6 for the specific task. 6.1.2 Speedup for Slide Layout I estimated the potential speed-up of the smart grid approach by simulating the necessary user interaction. The simulation was based on assumptions which sub- sume the smart grid concept from the user’s perspective: The user chooses which element to insert, describes the place in the smart grid where the element should go and in some cases specifies additional constraints. 83
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 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
2.2 Quantitative Aspects FIELD STUD
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
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 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 79 and 80: 5.2 An Application of Dynamic Progr
Page 81: 5.2 An Application of Dynamic Progr
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?