Quill: A Gesture Design Tool for Pen-based User Interfaces

Speaker
Chris Long
Postdoctoral Researcher, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

This talk will discuss the motivation, design, and development of a tool for designing gestures for pen-based user interfaces. Pen-based computers are becoming more common, especially small devices such as the Palm Pilot. One common technique in pen-based interfaces is using gestures—marks that invoke commands. Gestures can be intuitive and faster than other methods of invoking commands. However, gestures are sometimes problematic, in part because they are hard to design.

To help interface designers create better gestures, I designed and built quill, an intelligent gesture design tool. It warns designers about gestures that may be hard for the computer to recognize or may be confused by people, and gives advice on how to fix these problems. An evaluation of quill revealed that its advice was helpful for some but not all designers. More work is needed to improve the usefulness of the advice to more designers.

Speaker's Bio

A. Chris Long is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the HCI Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He is working with Brad Myers on Silver, an intelligent digital video editor. He finished his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley in June, 2001. His dissertation produced quill, the first gesture design tool for pen-based user interfaces. He is also interested in speech interfaces, personal information management, and security usability. He plans to apply for permanent jobs in 2002, primarily faculty positions at research universities.