skip to main content
10.1145/1294211.1294241acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesuistConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Bubble clusters: an interface for manipulating spatial aggregation of graphical objects

Published: 07 October 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Spatial layout is frequently used for managing loosely organized information, such as desktop icons and digital ink. To help users organize this type of information efficiently, we propose an interface for manipulating spatial aggregations of objects. The aggregated objects are automatically recognized as a group, and the group structure is visualized as a two-dimensional bubble surface that surrounds the objects. Users can drag, copy, or delete a group by operating on the bubble. Furthermore, to help pick out individual objects in a dense aggregation, the system spreads the objects to avoid overlapping when requested. This paper describes the design of this interface and its implementation. We tested our technique in icon grouping and ink relocation tasks and observed improvements in user performance.

Supplementary Material

JPG File (p173-watanabe.jpg)
MP4 File (p173-watanabe.mp4)

References

[1]
Agarawala, A. and Balakrishnan, R. Keepin' it real: pushing the desktop metaphor with physics, piles and the pen. In Proceedings of CHI, pp. 1283--1292, 2006.
[2]
Bauer, D., Fastrez, P., and Hollan, J. Spatial tools for managing personal information collections. In Proceedings of HICSS', pp. 104.2, 2005.
[3]
Bederson, B.B., Hollan, J.D., Perlin, K., Meyer, J., Bacon, D., and Furnas, G. Pad++: A zoomable graphical sketchpad for exploring alternate interface physics. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, Volume 7, Number 1, pp. 3--31, 1996.
[4]
Blinn, J.F. A generalization of algebraic surface drawing. In ACM Transactions on Graphics, Volume 1, Issue 3 (July 1982), pp. 235--256, 1982.
[5]
Davis, T.A. UMFPACK Version 4.1 User Guide, 2003.
[6]
Furnas, G.W. The fisheye view: a new look at structured files. Technical Report, Bell Laboratories, 1981.
[7]
Goto, M. and Goto, T. Musicream: new music playback interface for streaming, sticking, sorting, and recalling musical pieces. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval, pp. 404--411, 2005.
[8]
Grossman, T. and Balakrishnan, R. The bubble cursor: enhancing target acquisition by dynamic resizing of the cursor's activation area. In Proceedings of CHI, pp. 281--290, 2005.
[9]
Igarashi, T., Matsuoka, S., and Masui, T. Adaptive recognition of implicit structures in human organized lay-outs. In Proceedings of Visual Languages '95, pp. 258--266, 1995.
[10]
Igarashi, T., Moscovich, T., and Hughes, J.F. As-rigid-as-possible shape manipulation. In ACM Transactions on Computer Graphics, Volume 24, Issue 3, ACM SIGGRAPH 2005, pp. 1134--1141, 2005.
[11]
Kramer, A. Translucent patches.dissolving windows. In Proceedings of UIST, pp. 121--130, 1994.
[12]
Lorensen, W.E. and Cline, H.E. Marching cubes: a high resolution 3D surface construction algorithm. In Pro-ceedings of SIGGRAPH, pp. 163--169, 1987.
[13]
Mander, R., Salomon, G., and Wong, Y.Y. A 'pile' metaphor for supporting casual organization of information. In Proceedings of CHI, pp. 627--634, 1992.
[14]
Moran, T.P., Chiu, P., van Melle, W., and Kurtenbach, G. Implicit structure for pen-based systems within a freeform interaction paradigm. In Proceedings of CHI, pp. 487--494, 1995.
[15]
Mynatt, E.D., Igarashi, T., Edwards, W.K., and La-Marca, A. Flatland: new dimensions in office white-boards. In Proceedings of CHI, pp. 346--353, 1999.
[16]
Perlin, K. and Fox, D. Pad: an alternative approach to the computer interface. In Proceedings of SIGGRAPH, pp. 57--64, 1993.
[17]
Ramos, G., Robertson, G., Czerwinski, M., Tan, D., Baudisch, P., Hinckley, K., Agrawala, M. Tumble! Splat! Helping users access and manipulate occluded content in 2D drawings. In Proceedings of AVI, pp. 428--435, 2006.
[18]
Robertson, G., Czerwinski, M., Larson, K., Robbins, D.C., Thiel, D., and van Dantzich, M. Data Mountain: using spatial memory for document management. In Proceedings of UIST, pp. 153--162, 1998.
[19]
Saund, E., Fleet, D., Larner, D., and Mahoney, J. Per-ceptually-supported image editing of text and graphics. In Proceedings of UIST, pp. 183--192, 2003.
[20]
Saund, E. and Moran, T.P. A perceptually supported sketch editor. In Proceedings of UIST, pp. 175--184, 1994.
[21]
Shipman, F.M., III, Marshall, C.C., and Moran, T.P. Finding and using implicit structure in human-organized spatial layouts of information. In Proceedings of CHI 1995, pp. 346--353, 1995.
[22]
Worden, A., Walker, N., Bharat, K., and Hudson, S. Making computers easier for older adults to use: area cursors and sticky icons. In Proceedings of CHI, pp. 266--271, 1997.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)SpaceEditing: A Latent Space Editing Interface for Integrating Human Knowledge into Deep Neural NetworksProceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3640543.3645211(489-503)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
  • (2024)CanvasPic: An Interactive Tool for Freely Generating Facial Images Based on Spatial LayoutExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650952(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2022)The Effectiveness of Path-Segmentation for Modeling Lasso Times in Width-Varying PathsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35677376:ISS(640-659)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2022
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Bubble clusters: an interface for manipulating spatial aggregation of graphical objects

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    UIST '07: Proceedings of the 20th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
    October 2007
    306 pages
    ISBN:9781595936790
    DOI:10.1145/1294211
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 07 October 2007

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. clustering
    2. direct manipulation
    3. spatial layout

    Qualifiers

    • Article

    Conference

    UIST07

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 561 of 2,567 submissions, 22%

    Upcoming Conference

    UIST '25
    The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
    September 28 - October 1, 2025
    Busan , Republic of Korea

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)10
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3
    Reflects downloads up to 08 Mar 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)SpaceEditing: A Latent Space Editing Interface for Integrating Human Knowledge into Deep Neural NetworksProceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3640543.3645211(489-503)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
    • (2024)CanvasPic: An Interactive Tool for Freely Generating Facial Images Based on Spatial LayoutExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650952(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2022)The Effectiveness of Path-Segmentation for Modeling Lasso Times in Width-Varying PathsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35677376:ISS(640-659)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2022
    • (2021)Spatial Labeling: Leveraging Spatial Layout for Improving Label Quality in Non-Expert Image AnnotationProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445165(1-12)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
    • (2021)A Generic Framework and Library for Exploration of Small Multiples through Interactive PilingIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2020.302894827:2(358-368)Online publication date: Feb-2021
    • (2020)Necessary and Unnecessary Distractor Avoidance Movements Affect User Behaviors in Crossing OperationsACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/341841327:6(1-31)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020
    • (2019)CARDS: A Mixed-Reality System for Collaborative Learning at SchoolProceedings of the 2019 ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces10.1145/3343055.3359721(55-64)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2019
    • (2019)Interactive modeling of lofted shapes from a single imageComputational Visual Media10.1007/s41095-019-0153-06:3(279-289)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2019
    • (2016)Visualizing Opportunities of Collaboration in Large Research OrganizationsHCI in Business, Government, and Organizations: eCommerce and Innovation10.1007/978-3-319-39396-4_32(350-361)Online publication date: 22-Jun-2016
    • (2016)A Potential Field Function for Overlapping Point Set and Graph Cluster VisualizationComputer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics - Theory and Applications10.1007/978-3-319-25117-2_9(136-152)Online publication date: 7-Jan-2016
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media