DateLens: A fisheye calendar interface for PDAs

ABSTRACT

Calendar applications for small handheld devices are growing in popularity. This led us to develop DateLens, a novel calendar interface for PDAs designed to support complex tasks. It uses a fisheye representation coupled with compact overviews to give the big picture in a small space. The interface also gives users control over the visible time period, as well as supporting integrated search to discover patterns and outliers. Designed with device scalability in mind, DateLens currently runs on desktop computers as well as PDAs. Two user studies were conducted to examine the viability of DateLens as a replacement for traditional calendar visualizations. In the first study, non-PDA users performed complex tasks significantly faster with DateLens than with the Microsoft Pocket PC 2002^TM calendar (using a PDA emulator). In addition, they rated DateLens as being easier to use than the default calendar application for a majority of the tasks. In the second study, the participants were expert Pocket PC users and the software was run on their own devices. Again, DateLens performed significantly faster for the complex tasks, and there were satisfaction differences favoring each calendar for different kinds of tasks. From these studies, it is clear that DateLens is superior for more complex tasks such as those associated with longer time periods. For daily event tracking, users familiar with the default Pocket PC calendar strongly preferred its daily view and behaviors.

REFERENCES

• 1: Ricardo A. Baeza-Yates , Berthier Ribeiro-Neto, Modern Information Retrieval, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1999
• 2: Benjamin B. Bederson, Fisheye menus, Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.217-225, November 06-08, 2000, San Diego, California, United States [doi>10.1145/354401.354782]
• 3: Benjamin B. Bederson , Angela Boltman, Does Animation Help Users Build Mental Maps of Spatial Information?, Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, p.28, October 24-29, 1999
• 4: Benjamin B. Bederson , Aaron Clamage , Mary P. Czerwinski , George G. Robertson, A fisheye calendar interface for PDAs: providing overviews for small displays, CHI '03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/765891.765893]
• 5: Benjamin B. Bederson , Jon Meyer , Lance Good, Jazz: an extensible zoomable user interface graphics toolkit in Java, Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.171-180, November 06-08, 2000, San Diego, California, United States [doi>10.1145/354401.354754]
• 6: Staffan Björk , Lars Erik Holmquist , Peter Ljungstrand , Johan Redström, PowerView: structured access to integrated information on small screens, CHI '00 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 01-06, 2000, The Hague, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/633292.633447]
• 7: Staffan Björk , Lars Erik Holmquist , Johan Redström , Ivan Bretan , Rolf Danielsson , Jussi Karlgren , Kristofer Franzén, WEST: a Web browser for small terminals, Proceedings of the 12th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.187-196, November 07-10, 1999, Asheville, North Carolina, United States [doi>10.1145/320719.322601]
• 8: G. W. Furnas, Generalized fisheye views, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.16-23, April 13-17, 1986, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
• 9: Furnas, G. W. 1991. The Fisheye Calendar System. (Report No. TM-ARH-020558). Bellcore, Morristown, NJ.
• 10: Hill, W. and Hollan, J. 1994. History-Enriched Digital Objects: Prototypes and Policy Issues. The Information Society 10, 2, 139--145.
• 11: Inxight. 2003. http://www.inxight.com.
• 12: John Lamping , Ramana Rao , Peter Pirolli, A focus+context technique based on hyperbolic geometry for visualizing large hierarchies, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.401-408, May 07-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado, United States [doi>10.1145/223904.223956]
• 13: James R. Lewis, IBM computer usability satisfaction questionnaires: psychometric evaluation and instructions for use, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, v.7 n.1, p.57-78, Jan.-March 1995 [doi>10.1080/10447319509526110]
• 14: Jock D. Mackinlay , George G. Robertson , Robert DeLine, Developing calendar visualizers for the information visualizer, Proceedings of the 7th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.109-118, November 02-04, 1994, Marina del Rey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/192426.192470]
• 15: Catherine Plaisant , Ben Shneiderman, Scheduling home control devices: design issues and usability evaluation of four touchscreen interfaces, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, v.36 n.3, p.375-393, March 1992 [doi>10.1016/0020-7373(92)90040-R]
• 16: Ramana Rao , Stuart K. Card, The table lens: merging graphical and symbolic representations in an interactive focus + context visualization for tabular information, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: celebrating interdependence, p.318-322, April 24-28, 1994, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/191666.191776]
• 17: Manojit Sarkar , Marc H. Brown, Graphical fisheye views of graphs, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.83-91, May 03-07, 1992, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/142750.142763]
• 18: Schaffer, D., Zuo, Z., Bartram, L., Dill, J., Dubs, S., Greenberg, S., and Roseman, M. 1997. Comparing Fisheye and Full-Zoom Techniques for Navigation of Hierarchically Clustered Networks. In Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI 97). Canadian Information Processing Society, 87--96.
• 19: Spence, R. and Apperley, M. 1982. Data Base Navigation: an Office Environment for the Professional. Behaviour & Information Technology 1, 1, 43--54.

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)

Additional 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: Screen design (e.g., text, graphics, color)

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.6 Methodology and Techniques
          Subjects: Interaction techniques

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
Fisheye distortion interfaces, PDAs, animation, calendar interfaces, graphics, information visualization