Power tools and composite tools: integrating automation with direct manipulation

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a drawing system that incorporates two novel interaction techniques based on analogies to physical tools. Power tools add limited autonomy in the form of rotators and movers for automated circular, linear, and Bezier-curve movement. Composite tools are user-constructed combinations of existing tools to create new functionality.

REFERENCES

• 1: Benjamin B. Bederson , James D. Hollan , Allison Druin , Jason Stewart , David Rogers , David Proft, Local tools: an alternative to tool palettes, Proceedings of the 9th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.169-170, November 06-08, 1996, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/237091.237116]
• 2: Eric Horvitz, Principles of mixed-initiative user interfaces, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.159-166, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.303030]
• 3: Pattie Maes, Agents that reduce work and information overload, Communications of the ACM, v.37 n.7, p.30-40, July 1994 [doi>10.1145/176789.176792]
• 4: Robert St. Amant , Thomas E. Horton, Characterizing tool use in an interactive drawing environment, Proceedings of the 2nd international symposium on Smart graphics, p.86-93, June 11-13, 2002, Hawthorne, New York [doi>10.1145/569005.569018]
• 5: Robert St. Amant , Thomas E. Horton, A tool-based interactive drawing environment, CHI '02 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/506443.506585]
• 6: Ben Shneiderman, Designing the user interface (2nd ed.): strategies for effective human-computer interaction, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1992

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)

General Terms:
Human Factors

Keywords:
drawing environments, tools