GVU Technical Report Series

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GVU Technical Report Series

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 15

Interaction Techniques for Ambiguity Resolution in Recognition-Based Interfaces

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2000) Mankoff, Jennifer C. ; Hudson, Scott E. ; Abowd, Gregory D.

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.
Interacting with Multiple Alternatives Generated by Recognition Technologies

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999) Mankoff, Jennifer C. ; Abowd, Gregory D. ; Hudson, Scott E.

Despite significant advances in recognition technologies in areas such as speech and gesture recognition, our experience tells us that recognition errors and uncertainty are unlikely to disappear. For the foreseeable future, use of recognition based systems will introduce uncertainty into the input process. If interactive systems are going to work robustly with recognition-based input, it will be necessary to consider uncertainty as a normal part of input handling rather than considering it to be an anomaly or an exceptional condition. This paper considers techniques for explicit treatment of input uncertainty in user interfaces. In particular, it considers a general class of techniques for the display of, and interaction with, multiple alternatives generated by recognition technologies. Augmentation of the typical event-handling infrastructure is discussed, as well as an application interface infrastructure which attempts to minimize the impact of uncertainty on the application. A prototype system that embodies this infrastructure is also considered.
Visualizing Complex Hypermedia Networks through Multiple Hierarchical Views

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1995) Mukherjea, Sougata ; Foley, James D. ; Hudson, Scott E.

Our work concerns visualizing the information space of hypermedia systems using multiple hierarchical views. Although overview diagrams are useful for helping the user to navigate in a hypermedia system, for any real-world system they become too complicated and large to be really useful. This is because these diagrams represent complex network structures which are very difficult to visualize and comprehend. On the other hand, effective visualizations of hierarchies have been developed. Our strategy is to provide the user with different hierarchies, each giving a different perspective to the underlying information space, to help the user better comprehend the information. We propose an algorithm based on content and structural analysis to form hierarchies from hypermedia networks. The algorithm is automatic but can be guided by the user. The multiple hierarchies can be visualized in various ways. We give examples of the implementation of the algorithm on two hypermedia systems.
Synthesized Interaction on the X Window System

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1995) Bharat, Krishna A. ; Hudson, Scott E. ; Sukaviriya, Piyawadee (Noi)

We have come to regard the human user, manipulating physical input devices as the sole driver of interaction in the graphical workspace. It is conceivable that for a vari ety of applications, such as help and tutorial systems, macro-by-example systems, session-playback systems and in collaborative work, we may require an alternative agent to perform tasks on the workspace, alongside the user. In this paper we describe a relatively non-intrusive and porta ble scheme for supporting such "synthesized interaction" on the X window system, and illustrate how toolkits may be instrumented to cooperate with such an agent at runt ime, by providing information about the location of objects in their interfaces. In particular we describe the integration of synthesized interaction in the Artkit toolkit, which is structurally similar to most modern toolkits and should serve as relevant example.
Video Temporal Compression Techniques to Facilitate Usability Evaluation

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1995) Santos, Paulo J. ; Hudson, Scott E. ; Guzdial, Mark ; Badre, Albert N.

Video of users' interaction with interfaces is often collected as part of the usability evaluation process. Analyzing the video is a time-comsuming task, because of the length of the video. One way to reduce the time required to view the video is to perform a temporal compression of the video, before or during playback. Such compression, however, has to be done is a way that minimizes loss of information. This paper present a video compression technique that has the ability to reduce the time required to view a session by a factor of 10 or higher, yet maintains and highlights the features normally sought during a usability analysis. The paper introduces an algorithm, and outlines a preliminary study on the usability of our video compression.
Querying, Navigating and Visualizing an Online Library Catalog

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1995) Veerasamy, Aravindan ; Hudson, Scott E. ; Navathe, Shamkant B.

We describe the design of an User Interface for a ranked output Information Retrieval system that integrates querying, navigation and visualization in a seamless fashion. Highlights of the system include the following: -- Using a visualization scheme, the interface provides visual feedback to the user about how the query words influence the ranking of retrieved documents. -- By simple drag-and-drop operations of objects on the screen, the interface facilitates a naive end-user in constructing complex structured queries and in providing relevance feedback. -- To suit the evolving information needs of the user, the interface supports navigational features such as browsing documents by specific authors and browsing the Table of Contents of publications. -- The interface integrates an online thesaurus which provides words related to the query that can be used by the user to expand the original query. By providing a rich set of features, the interface coherently supports a wide spectrum of information gathering tactics for different classes of users.
Analyzing and Visualizing Log Files: A Computational Science of Usability

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1994) Guzdial, Mark ; Santos, Paulo J. ; Badre, Albert N. ; Hudson, Scott E. ; Gray, Mark H.

Researchers in human-computer interactions know that software can easily be instrumented to create a trace of user events in the interface (which we call a log file) for later analysis. Using these data for studying usability or other HCI questions is certainly attractive. The data are cheap - data gathering is totally automatic. The data are gathered discretely, so the possibility of a Hawthorne effect is diminished. Data can be collected outside the laboratory, while the user is engaged in real tasks, so the results have greater ecological validity. The problem has always been what to do with the volume of data that gets generated. With so much data, it's difficult to determine what's useful and how to display the useful portion in a meaningful way.
A System for Efficient and Flexible One-Way Constraint Evaluation in C++

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1993) Hudson, Scott E.

This paper describes the Eval/vite system for compiling one-way constraints into C++ objects, as well as the highly efficient lazy and incremental evaluation algorithm behind it. This system supports the creation of C++ object classes whose members are controlled by one-way constraint equations. These objects are declared with simple specifications much like C++ class declarations. The system is designed to work smoothly with other C++ code, producing type-safe code which supports normal inheritance and information hiding mechanisms and works with most types. In particular, the system efficiently supports constraints involving indirection either through pointers or C++ reference types. The system also works with other sophisticated constructs such as the use of function valued constraint equations.
A Framework for Low Level Analysis and Synthesis to Support High Level Authoring of Multimedia Documents

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1993) Hudson, Scott E. ; Hsi, Chen-Ning

This paper describes a low level hierarchical framework for composition of multimedia documents that is designed to support the types of analysis, error checking, and synthesis techniques needed for rich user support in a high-level authoring system. This framework supports flexible synchronization and flow control primitives as well as a range of interactive, continuous, and discrete media in a uniform fashion. The compositional approach taken in this work supports a style of analysis similar to the semantic analysis performed in programming language translation. This analysis capability provides a robust base upon which a number of potential high-level authoring facilities can be built.
A Notation for the Visual Specification of Geometric Relations in Rule-Based User Interface Development Environments

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1993) Yeatts, Andrey K. ; Hudson, Scott E.

This paper describes a new visual notation for specifying geometric relationships (for example, in a user interface presentation application). This notation is designed to provide a centerpiece for the visual specification of predicates and rules in the BluePrint rule-based user interface development environment. The notation, while simple and using only a handful of operator symbols, is extremely powerful and expressive. It operates in an intuitive fashion using analogies to the physically based concepts of alignment and measurement to express a wide range of linear relationships between presentation objects, and can be used to express dynamic as well as static properties.