Human-centered interaction with documents

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss a new user interface, a complementary environment for the work with personal document archives, i.e. for document filing and retrieval. We introduce our implementation of a spatial medium for document interaction, explorative search and active navigation, which exploits and further stimulates the human strengths of visual information processing. Our system achieves a high degree of immersion of the user, so that he/she forgets the artificiality of his/her environment. This is done by means of a tripartite ensemble of allowing users to interact naturally with gestures and postures (as an option gestures and postures can be individually taught to the system by users), exploiting 3D technology, and supporting the user to maintain structures he/she discovers, as well as provide computer calculated semantic structures. Our ongoing evaluation shows that even non-expert users can efficiently work with the information in a document collection, and have fun.

Data Exploration for Bisociative Knowledge Discovery: A Brief Overview of Tools and Evaluation Methods

“…Since association is an important capacity in human communication, visual information addresses patterns of understanding [9]. Furthermore, exploration can be seen as a creative act that requires the user to recognize important parts of the presented information and build connections to the facts he or she already knows while discarding irrelevant knowledge or postpone it for later reference in a different context.…”

Task modeling for collaborative authoring

“…BumpTop prototype (Agarawala et al, 2006) @VISOR Dengel et al, 2006) strives to realize the vision of a fully immersive virtual desktop by designing methods to present and visualize data in a way that integrates the user into his artificial surroundings seamlessly and gives him/her the opportunity to interact with it in a natural way. In this connection, a holistic context and content-sensitive approach for information retrieval, visualization, and navigation in manipulative virtual environments is in the research focus.…”

Managing a document-based information space

“…After several user studies with earlier demonstrators [9], we designed and implemented a dimensional congruent prototype for visualization of and interaction with personal document spaces. We allocated the different visualization and interaction metaphors to a 2D + 3D display environment by matching task, device, and interaction technique.…”