Phosphor: explaining transitions in the user interface using afterglow effects

ABSTRACT

Sometimes users fail to notice a change that just took place on their display. For example, the user may have accidentally deleted an icon or a remote collaborator may have changed settings in a control panel. Animated transitions can help, but they force users to wait for the animation to complete. This can be cumbersome, especially in situations where users did not need an explanation. We propose a different approach. Phosphor objects show the outcome of their transition instantly; at the same time they explain their change in retrospect. Manipulating a phosphor slider, for example, leaves an afterglow that illustrates how the knob moved. The parallelism of instant outcome and explanation supports both types of users. Users who already understood the transition can continue interacting without delay, while those who are inexperienced or may have been distracted can take time to view the effects at their own pace. We present a framework of transition designs for widgets, icons, and objects in drawing programs. We evaluate phosphor objects in two user studies and report significant performance benefits for phosphor objects.

REFERENCES

• 1: Assa, J., Caspi, Y., and Cohen-Or, D. Action synopsis: pose selection and illustration. In Proc. Siggraph'05, pp. 667--676.
• 2: Ronald Baecker , Ian Small , Richard Mander, Bringing icons to life, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Reaching through technology, p.1-6, April 27-May 02, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States [doi>10.1145/108844.108845]
• 3: Bartram, L. Can motion increase user interface bandwidth? In Proc. IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics'97. pp. 1686--1692.
• 4: Bartram, L., Ware, C. and Calvert, T. Moving Icons: Detection and Distraction, Interact 2001.
• 5: Baudisch, P., Cutrell, E., and Robertson, G. High-Density Cursor: A Visualization Technique that Helps Users Keep Track of Fast-Moving Mouse Cursors. In Proc. Interact'03, pp. 236--243.
• 6: Baudisch, P., Cutrell, E., Robbins, D., Czerwinski, M., Tandler, P. Bederson, B., and Zierlinger, A. Drag-and-Pop and Drag-and-Pick: Techniques for Accessing Remote Screen Content on Touch- and Pen-operated Systems. In Proc. Interact'03, pp. 57--64.
• 7: Bétrancourt, M. and Tversky, B. (in press). Simple animations for organizing diagrams. International Journal of Human Computer Studies.
• 8: Cavanagh, P. and Alvarez, G. Tracking multiple targets with multifocal attention. TRENDS in Cognitive Science, Vol. 9. No. 7, pp. 249--354, July 2005
• 9: Bay-Wei Chang , David Ungar, Animation: from cartoons to the user interface, Proceedings of the 6th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.45-55, December 1993, Atlanta, Georgia, United States [doi>10.1145/168642.168647]
• 10: Luca Chittaro , Lucio Ieronutti, A visual tool for tracing users' behavior in Virtual Environments, Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces, May 25-28, 2004, Gallipoli, Italy [doi>10.1145/989863.989868]
• 11: Feiner, S. APEX: An Experiment in the Automatic Creation of Pictorial Explanations. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 5(11), pp. 29--37, 1985.
• 12: Flash components: download.macromedia.com/pub/documentation/en/flash/fl8/fl8_using_components.pdf
• 13: Carl Gutwin , Reagan Penner, Improving interpretation of remote gestures with telepointer traces, Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 16-20, 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA [doi>10.1145/587078.587086]
• 14: Michael Haller , Christian Hanl , Jeremiah Diephuis, Non-photorealistic rendering techniques for motion in computer games, Computers in Entertainment (CIE), v.2 n.4, October 2004 [doi>10.1145/1037851.1037869]
• 15: Jeffrey Heer , Stuart K. Card , James A. Landay, prefuse: a toolkit for interactive information visualization, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA [doi>10.1145/1054972.1055031]
• 16: William C. Hill , James D. Hollan , Dave Wroblewski , Tim McCandless, Edit wear and read wear, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.3-9, May 03-07, 1992, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/142750.142751]
• 17: Nate Hoobler , Greg Humphreys , Maneesh Agrawala, Visualizing Competitive Behaviors in Multi-User Virtual Environments, Proceedings of the conference on Visualization '04, p.163-170, October 10-15, 2004 [doi>10.1109/VIS.2004.120]
• 18: Victor Kaptelinin , Timo Mäntylä , Jan Åström, Transient visual cues for scrolling: an empirical study, CHI '02 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/506443.506513]
• 19: Christian Klein , Benjamin B. Bederson, Benefits of animated scrolling, CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, OR, USA [doi>10.1145/1056808.1057068]
• 20: David Kurlander , Tim Skelly , David Salesin, Comic Chat, Proceedings of the 23rd annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.225-236, August 1996 [doi>10.1145/237170.237260]
• 21: Lowe, R. Interactive animated diagrams: what information is extracted? In Proc. First International Conference on Using Complex Information Systems, Sept. 4-6 '96, Poitiers, France.
• 22: Maic Masuch, Speedlines: depicting motion in motionless pictures, ACM SIGGRAPH 99 Conference abstracts and applications, p.277, August 08-13, 1999, Los Angeles, California, United States [doi>10.1145/311625.312369]
• 23: McCloud, S. Understanding Comics. Perennial Currents, 1994.
• 24: McCrickard, S., Catrambone, R., and Stasko, J. Evaluating Animation in the Periphery as a Mechanism for Maintaining Awareness. In Proc. INTERACT'01, pp. 148--156.
• 25: Oksama, L. and Hyöna, J. Is multiple object tracking carried out automatically by an early vision mechanism independent of higher-order cognition? An individual difference approach. Visual Cognition, Vol. 11, pp. 631--671, 2004.
• 26: Reynolds, C. Stylized Depiction in Computer Graphics: Non-Photorealistic, Painterly and 'Toon Rendering. An annotated survey of online resources www.red3d.com/cwr/npr
• 27: George Robertson , Kim Cameron , Mary Czerwinski , Daniel Robbins, Polyarchy visualization: visualizing multiple intersecting hierarchies, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/503376.503452]
• 28: G. Robertson , S. K. Card , J. D. Mackinlay, The cognitive coprocessor architecture for interactive user interfaces, Proceedings of the 2nd annual ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on User interface software and technology, p.10-18, November 13-15, 1989, Williamsburg, Virginia, United States [doi>10.1145/73660.73662]
• 29: John T. Stasko, Animation in user interfaces: principles and techniques, User interface software, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1993
• 30: Loren Terveen , Will Hill, Finding and visualizing inter-site clan graphs, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.448-455, April 18-23, 1998, Los Angeles, California, United States [doi>10.1145/274644.274705]
• 31: Bruce H. Thomas , Paul Calder, Applying cartoon animation techniques to graphical user interfaces, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.8 n.3, p.198-222, September 2001 [doi>10.1145/502907.502909]
• 32: Barbara Tversky , Julie Bauer Morrison , Mireille Betrancourt, Animation: can it facilitate?, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.57 n.4, p.247-262, October 2002 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.2002.1017]
• 33: Ware, C., Neufeld, E. and Bartram, L. Visualizing Causal Relations. In Proc. INFOVIZ '99, pp. 39--42.
• 34: Wickens, C. And Carswell, C. The proximity compatibility principle: its psychological foundation and relevance to display design. Human Factors 37, 473--494, 1995.
• 35: Jonathan Woodring , Han-Wei Shen, Chronovolumes: a direct rendering technique for visualizing time-varying data, Proceedings of the 2003 Eurographics/IEEE TVCG Workshop on Volume graphics, July 07-08, 2003, Tokyo, Japan [doi>10.1145/827051.827054]
• 36: Yantis, S. Multi-element visual tracking: Attention and perceptual organization. Cognitive Psych. 24, pp. 295--340, 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)
          Subjects: Graphical user interfaces (GUI)

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
cartoon animation, comic animation, diagrams, information visualization, phosphor, user interfaces