|
|
| The HabilisDraw workspace (click for larger image) |
(This section is still under development.)
Most graphical user interfaces employ some form of direct manipulation in their design. Often however, the extent of the direct manipulation is limited; clicking on a button may simulate the action of pressing a physical button, but the action performed by the interface when the button is pushed may by highly abstract (e.g. causing a dialog box to disappear). We designed a set of programs that made extensive use of metaphors based on the way humans interact with tools in the real world. For example, HabilisDraw is a drawing application with virtual reproductions of real tools such as pens, rulers, and compasses. Tools are explicit objects in the work environment, and multiple instances of a tool may exist simultaneously, each with its own attributes (e.g., color, length, and angle). Further, tools can be composed to combine their effects; using a pen by itself allows freehand drawing, combining it with a ruler creates a straight line, combining with a compass creates circles and arcs.
Other applications included a mixed-initiative system for solving traveling salesman-type problems, as well as extensions to the HabilisDraw application, including a version that supported bi-manual input via a touch-screen interface.
For additional information, see Robert St. Amant's site.
St. Amant, R., and Horton, T. E. (2002). A tool-based interactive drawing environment. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) Extended Abstracts, pp. 762-763.
St. Amant, R., and Horton, T. E. (2002). Characterizing tool use in an interactive drawing environment. Second International Symposium on Smart Graphics, pp. 86-93.
Horton, T. E. (2004). HabilisDraw: A tool-based direct manipulation software environment. Department of Computer Science, NC State University.
Horton, T. E. (2004). Tool-based direct manipulation interfaces. ITR Workshop, Rostock, Germany.
St. Amant, R., and Horton, T. E. Tool-Based Direct Manipulation Environments.