Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  A Comparison of Zoomable User Interfaces and Folders For Grouping Visual Objects (08 Dec 2004) This work was intended to find out why sensemaking tasks are often more difficult to complete with software tools than with physical tools. Previous research has indicated that organizing information is a particularly difficult component of these tasks on computers because of the limited size displays. To understand the mechanisms behind these observations, our work evaluated how well two interface techniques, overview+detail and zooming, support the organization activity on a space-constrained computer display. The task in our study required subjects to organize shapes into groups based on similar visual properties. The study demonstrated a 30% improvement in completion time for a zoomable workspace over a folder-based overview+detail workspace. Subjects also indicated strong preferences for the zoomable workspace. These results are somewhat surprising given that most subjects have extensive experience with folders in tools such as file browsers and email clients and only minimal exposure to zoomable interfaces. The observed differences between interface conditions seemed to be primarily driven by the shorter times needed to visually compare objects in the continuous zoomable workspace versus the segmented folder workspace. In addition, the formality of the folder interface was also a likely factor contributing to the poorer performance. We also suggest that the results from this study will extend beyond shapes to a range of organization tasks including those with more abstract object types like text objects, web pages, images and pen strokes. Because these tasks all involve making comparisons among groups of objects, the facilities of a zoomable workspace are likely to have similar advantages to those seen for shapes. Finally, it should be noted that although the visualization problems addressed here will be mitigated by the availability of larger computer displays, these problems will persist for large sensemaking tasks and for portable devices such as laptops and PDAs. Consequently, these results are intended to guide interface designers in applying visualization techniques in these settings for future software authoring and sensemaking tools. Article URL: ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil/Reports-Abstracts-Bibliography/2004-33html/2004-33.htm Read 41 more articles from University Of Maryland sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: A Rank-by-Feature Framework for Interactive Exploration of Multidimensional Data     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy