skip to main content
10.1145/1866029.1866057acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesuistConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

UIMarks: quick graphical interaction with specific targets

Published: 03 October 2010 Publication History

Abstract

This paper reports on the design and evaluation of UIMarks, a system that lets users specify on-screen targets and associated actions by means of a graphical marking language. UIMarks supplements traditional pointing by providing an alternative mode in which users can quickly activate these marks. Associated actions can range from basic pointing facilitation to complex sequences possibly involving user interaction: one can leave a mark on a palette to make it more reachable, but the mark can also be configured to wait for a click and then automatically move the pointer back to its original location, for example. The system has been implemented on two different platforms, Metisse and OS X. We compared it to traditional pointing on a set of elementary and composite tasks in an abstract setting. Although pure pointing was not improved, the programmable automation supported by the system proved very effective.

Supplementary Material

JPG File (114s-chapuis.jpg)
MOV File (114s-chapuis.mov)

References

[1]
}}R. Balakrishnan. "Beating" Fitts' law: virtual enhancements for pointing facilitation. IJHCS, 61(6):857­--874, 2004.
[2]
}}P. Baudisch, E. Cutrell, M. Czerwinski, D. Robbins, P. Tandler, B. Bederson, and A. Zierlinger. Drag-and-pop and drag-and-pick: techniques for accessing remote screen content on touch- and pen-operated systems. Proc. INTERACT '03, 57--­64. IOS Press, 2003.
[3]
}}P. Baudisch, A. Zotov, E. Cutrell, and K. Hinckley. Starburst: a target expansion algorithm for non-uniform target distributions. Proc. AVI '08, 129­--137. ACM, 2008.
[4]
}}B. Bederson, J. Hollan, A. Druin, J. Stewart, D. Rogers, and D. Proft. Local tools: An alternative to tool palettes. Proc. UIST '96, 169--­170. ACM, 1996.
[5]
}}R. Blanch, Y. Guiard, and M. Beaudouin-Lafon. Semantic pointing: improving target acquisition with control-display ratio adaptation. Proc. CHI '04, 519--526. ACM, 2004.
[6]
}}R. Blanch and M. Ortega. Rake cursor: improving pointing performance with concurrent input channels. Proc. CHI '09, 1415--­1418. ACM, 2009.
[7]
}}O. Chapuis, J.-B. Labrune, and E. Pietriga. Dynaspot: speed-dependent area cursor. Proc. CHI '09, 1391­--1400. ACM, 2009.
[8]
}}O. Chapuis and N. Roussel. Metisse is not a 3D desktop! Proc. UIST'05, 13­--22. ACM, 2005.
[9]
}}M. Dixon and J. Fogarty. Prefab: implementing advanced behaviors using pixel-based reverse engineering of interface structure. Proc. CHI '10, 1525­--1534. ACM, 2010.
[10]
}}P. Fitts. The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement. J. Exper. Psych., 47:381--­391, 1954.
[11]
}}T. Grossman and R. Balakrishnan. The bubble cursor: enhancing target acquisition by dynamic resizing of the cursor's activation area. Proc. CHI '05, 281--­290. ACM, 2005.
[12]
}}Y. Guiard, R. Blanch, and M. Beaudouin-Lafon. Object pointing: a complement to bitmap pointing in GUIs. Proc. GI '04, 9­--16. CHCCS, 2004.
[13]
}}A. Hurst, S. Hudson, and J. Mankoff. Automatically identifying targets users interact with during real world tasks. Proc. IUI '10, 11­--20. ACM, 2010.
[14]
}}A. Hurst, J. Mankoff, A. Dey, and S. Hudson. Dirty desktops: using a patina of magnetic mouse dust to make common interactor targets easier to select. Proc. UIST '07, 183--­186. ACM, 2007.
[15]
}}P. Kabbash and W. Buxton. The "prince" technique: Fitts' law and selection using area cursors. Proc. CHI '95, 273­--279. ACM/Addison-Wesley, 1995.
[16]
}}M. Kobayashi and T. Igarashi. Ninja cursors: using multiple cursors to assist target acquisition on large screens. Proc. CHI '08, 949--­958. ACM, 2008.
[17]
}}Y. Li, K. Hinckley, Z. Guan, and J. Landay. Experimental analysis of mode switching techniques in pen-based user interfaces. Proc. CHI '05, 461­--470. ACM, 2005.
[18]
}}H. Lieberman, F. Paternò, and V. Wulf. End user development. Human-Computer Interaction Series, Vol. 9. Springer-Verlag, 2006.
[19]
}}I. S. MacKenzie. Fitts' law as a research and design tool in human-computer interaction. HCI, 7:91--­139, 1992.
[20]
}}M. McGuffin and R. Balakrishnan. Fitts' law and expanding targets: experimental studies and designs for user interfaces. ACM ToCHI, 12(4):388--­422, 2005.
[21]
}}T. Nishida and T. Igarashi. Drag-and-guess: drag-and-drop with prediction. Proc. INTERACT'07, 461­--474. Springer-Verlag, 2007.
[22]
}}S. Seow. Information theoretic models of HCI: A comparison of the Hick-Hyman law and Fitts' law. HCI, 20(3):315--­352, 2005.
[23]
}}W. Stuerzlinger, O. Chapuis, D. Phillips, and N. Roussel. User interface façades: towards fully adaptable user interfaces. Proc. UIST '06, 309--­318. ACM, 2006.
[24]
}}T. Tsandilas and m. c. schraefel. Bubbling menus: a selective mechanism for accessing hierarchical drop-down menus. Proc. CHI '07, 1195­--1204. ACM, 2007.
[25]
}}J. Wobbrock, J. Fogarty, S. Liu, S. Kimuro, and S. Harada. The angle mouse: target-agnostic dynamic gain adjustment based on angular deviation. Proc. CHI '09, 1401--­1410. ACM, 2009.
[26]
}}A. Worden, N. Walker, K. Bharat, and S. Hudson. Making computers easier for older adults to use: area cursors and sticky icons. Proc. CHI '97, 266­--271. ACM, 1997.
[27]
}}S. Zhai, C. Morimoto, and S. Ihde. Manual and gaze input cascaded (MAGIC) pointing. Proc. CHI '99, 246--­253. ACM, 1999.

Cited By

View all
  • (2021)SmartCom: Exploiter un Smartphone pour Interagir avec les Barres d'OutilsProceedings of the 32nd Conference on l'Interaction Homme-Machine10.1145/3450522.3451244(1-10)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2021
  • (2021)KeyTch: Combining the Keyboard with a Touchscreen for Rapid Command Selection on ToolbarsProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445288(1-13)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
  • (2018)Introducing Transient Gestures to Improve Pan and Zoom on Touch SurfacesProceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3173574.3173599(1-8)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2018
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. UIMarks: quick graphical interaction with specific targets

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    UIST '10: Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
    October 2010
    476 pages
    ISBN:9781450302715
    DOI:10.1145/1866029
    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: 03 October 2010

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. direct manipulation
    2. macros
    3. pointing

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    UIST '10

    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)5
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
    Reflects downloads up to 13 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2021)SmartCom: Exploiter un Smartphone pour Interagir avec les Barres d'OutilsProceedings of the 32nd Conference on l'Interaction Homme-Machine10.1145/3450522.3451244(1-10)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2021
    • (2021)KeyTch: Combining the Keyboard with a Touchscreen for Rapid Command Selection on ToolbarsProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445288(1-13)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
    • (2018)Introducing Transient Gestures to Improve Pan and Zoom on Touch SurfacesProceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3173574.3173599(1-8)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2018
    • (2015)Concept of continuity, a "strong concept" to design graphical architecture of interactive systemsProceedings of the 27th Conference on l'Interaction Homme-Machine10.1145/2820619.2820634(1-10)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2015
    • (2015)Reciprocal Drag-and-DropACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/278567022:6(1-36)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2015
    • (2014)Direct and indirect multi-touch interaction on a wall displayProceedings of the 26th Conference on l'Interaction Homme-Machine10.1145/2670444.2670445(147-152)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2014
    • (2013)Undo/redo by trajectoryProceedings of the 15th international conference on Human-Computer Interaction: interaction modalities and techniques - Volume Part IV10.1007/978-3-642-39330-3_77(712-721)Online publication date: 21-Jul-2013
    • (2012)A general-purpose target-aware pointing enhancement using pixel-level analysis of graphical interfacesProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2207676.2208734(3167-3176)Online publication date: 5-May-2012
    • (2012)Dwell-and-springProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2207676.2208339(1957-1966)Online publication date: 5-May-2012
    • (2011)Creating contextual help for GUIs using screenshotsProceedings of the 24th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology10.1145/2047196.2047214(145-154)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2011
    • 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