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

7.2 Résumé CONCLUSION
In my thesis, I present an approach that is influenced by constraint-based layout
automation as seen in research, but at the same time the implementation is based on
actual user demands. I spent more than two weeks on-site, watching professional
users using some standard software for real-life tasks. Supplementing the obser-
vation with interviews, surveys and hands-on experience, I gathered the domain
knowledge that was required to come up with an adequate solution. A commercial
product in early development state provided the basis to implement a prototype
and see how the new interaction concept works in practice. I am well aware of the
fact that this work only represents the first iteration in a sequence of others that
ought to follow in order to create the optimal user interface for the chosen setting.
A comparative case study suggested that creating initial slide layouts with the
new interaction concept is already about 20 % faster than with standard user inter-
faces. Together with the initial layout, most relevant spatial constraints are implic-
itly specified and automatically maintained from then on. Due to the fact that the
design of business slides is an iterative process, constantly integrating changes and
additions into an existing layout, a speed-up factor of around 5 with respect to all
layout related tasks appears feasible.
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