You are granted permission for the non-commercial reproduction, distribution, display, and performance of this technical report in any format. However, this permission is only for a period of 45 (forty-five) days from the most recent time that you verified that this technical report is still available from the Department of Computer Science of the University of Maryland at College Park under terms that include this permission. All other rights are reserved by the author(s).
Designing Storytelling Technologies to Encourage Collabortion Between. Steve Benford. Benjamin B. Bederson. Karl-Petter Åkesson. Victor Bayon. Allison Druin. Pär Hansson. Juan Pablo Hourcade. Rob Ingram. Helen Neale. Claire O’Malle. Kristian T. Simsarian. Danaë Stanton. Yngve Sundblad. Gustav Taxén. November 1999.
We describe the iterative design of two collaborative storytelling technologies for young children, KidPad and the Klump. We focus on the idea of designing interfaces to subtly encourage collaboration so that children are invited to discover the added benefits of working together. This idea has been motivated by our experiences of using early versions of our technologies in schools in Sweden and the UK. We compare the approach of encouraging collaboration with other approaches to synchronizing shared interfaces. We describe how we have revised the technologies to encourage collaboration and to reflect design suggestions made by the children themselves. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-99-76) University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Single Display Groupware. Benjamin B. Bederson. Jason Stewart. Allison Druin. November 1999.
We discuss 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 the 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. Through participant observation, video analysis, program instrumentation, and an informal survey, we discovered that the SDG approach to collaboration has strong potential. Children overwhelmingly prefer two mice to one mouse when collaborating with other children. We identified several collaborative styles including a dominant partner, independent simultaneous use, a mentor/mentee relationship, and active collaboration. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-99-75) University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Architecture and Implementation of a Java Package for Multiple Input. Juan Pablo Hourcade. Benjamin B. Bederson. May 1999.
A major difficulty in writing Single Display Groupware (co-present collaborative) applications is getting input from multiple devices. We introduce MID, a Java package that addresses this problem and offers an architecture to access advanced events through Java. In this paper, we describe the features, architecture and limitations of MID. We also briefly describe an application that uses MID to get input from multiple mice: KidPad. Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-99-26 University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Jazz: An Extensible 2D+Zooming Graphics Toolkit in Java. Benjamin B. Bederson. Britt McAlister. May 1999.
Jazz is a new general-purpose toolkit that supports applications using zooming object-oriented 2D graphics. It is built entirely in Java using Java2D, and thus runs on all platforms that support Java 2. It supports zooming, internal cameras, and lenses in a similar style to Pad++, but does so in a general purpose manner without a specific focus on zooming. Jazz is primarily a "scenegraph" for 2D graphics that is analogous to Sun's Java3D and SGI's OpenInventor in their support for 3D scenegraphs. This paper describes Jazz and discusses the issues of using a scenegraph for 2D graphics. We discuss the Jazz architecture, and how applications can build on top of it. Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-99-24 University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Does Zooming Improve Image Browsing?. Tammara T.A. Combs. Benjamin B. Bederson. March 1999.
We describe an image retrieval system we built based on a Zoomable User Interface (ZUI). We also discuss the design, results and analysis of a controlled experiment we performed on the browsing aspects of the system. The experiment resulted in a statistically significant difference in the interaction between number of images (25, 75, 225) and style of browser (2D, ZUI, 3D). The 2D and ZUI browser systems performed equally, and both performed better than the 3D systems. The image browsers tested during the experiment include Cerious Software's Thumbs Plus, TriVista Technology's Simple LandScape and Photo GoRound, and our Zoomable Image Browser based on Pad++. Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-99-14 University of Maryland Institute of Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Single Display Groupware: A Model for Co-present Collaboration. Jason Stewart. Benjamin B. Bederson. Allison Druin. December 1998.
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. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-98-75) University of Maryland Instsitute for Advacned Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Does a Sketchy Appearance Influence Drawing Behavior?. Jon Meyer. Benjamin B. Bederson. December 1998.
In this paper we examine the role of visual aesthetics in how people interact with computers. Specifically, we are interested in whether simply adopting a sketch-like visual appearance in a drawing application encourages users to interact with the application more freely or rapidly than they would if they were using the standard, precise, rectilinear appearance that most drawing applications now supply. We carried out two user studies. In the first study, we asked members of the University of Maryland Art History department to draw a series of diagrams using two different line styles. In the second experiment, we used the World Wide Web to collect drawing diagrams from a much broader set of participants. Both studies reveal that subjects draw more quickly using the sketch-like ('wavy') line style than the straight line style. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-98-74) University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Does Animation Help Users Build Mental Maps of Spatial Information?. Benjamin B. Bederson. Angela Boltman. December 1998.
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. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-98-73) University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Graphical Multiscale Web Histories: A Study of PadPrints. Ron R. Hightower. Laura T. Ring. Jonathan I. Helfman,. Benjamin B. Bederson. James D. Hollan. May 1998.
We have implemented a browser companion called PadPrints that dynamically builds a graphical history-map of visited web pages. PadPrints relies on Pad++, a zooming user interface (ZUI) development substrate, to display the history-map using minimal screen space. PadPrints functions in conjunction with a traditional web browser but without requiring any browser modifications. We performed two usability studies of PadPrints. The first addressed general navigation effectiveness. The second focused on history-related aspects of navigation. In tasks requiring returns to prior pages, users of PadPrints completed tasks in 61.2% of the time required by users of the same browser without PadPrints. We also observed significant decreases in the number of pages accessed when using PadPrints. Users found browsing with PadPrints more satisfying than using Netscape alone. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-98-33) University of Marylamd Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Last Generated Fri Aug 11 04:01:01 EDT 2000