Browsing by Author "Zanella, Ana"
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Item Open Access AVOIDING INTERFERENCE THROUGH TRANSLUCENT INTERFACE COMPONENTS IN SINGLE DISPLAY GROUPWARE(2000-12-06) Zanella, Ana; Greenberg, SaulOur research concerns the design of interface components tailored for single display groupware (SDG) where multiple co-located people, each with their own input device, interact over a single shared display. In particular, we are concerned with 'interference' effects, where one person's raising of an interface component (e.g., an menu) can impede another's view and interaction on the shared screen. Our solution uses translucent interface components, where others can see through the obstructing component and continue their work underneath it. Our in-progress evaluation suggests this design lessens interference effects.Item Open Access GROUPLAB AT SKIGRAPH(2000-03-21) Boyle, Michael; Kaasten, Shaun; Rounding, Michael; Tam, James; Zanella, Ana; Greenberg, Saul; Carpendale, Sheelagh; Maurer, FrankThe Western Computer Graphics Symposium, nicknamed 'SkiGraph', is an annual professional meeting comprising mostly graphics researchers and their graduate students from Western Canada. In 2000, several Western Canadian researchers in Human Computer Interaction: Saul Greenberg (U.Calgary), Carl Gutwin (U. Saskatchewan), Kori Inkpen (Simon Fraser) and Sheelagh Carpendale (U. Calgary) agreed to use Skigraph as a way to get themselves and their graduate students together, where students would present papers describing their research. Because it was important for all graduate students to share their ideas, the papers written could range from identification of research areas and tentative proposals of research problems all the way to detailed results from mature work. This research report collects five research papers by students at Grouplab to SkiGraph (Grouplab is the laboratory for human computer interaction research at the University of Calgary). The papers are listed below. In all cases, the students are the first author followed by faculty members who have supervised or contributed to the work in one way or another. Individual papers may be cited directly by including the following information.Item Open Access REDUCING INTERFERENCE IN SINGLE DISPLAY GROUPWARE THROUGH TRANSPARENCY(2001-02-07) Zanella, Ana; Greenberg, SaulSingle Display Groupware (SDG) supports face-to-face collaborators working over a single shared display, where all people have their own input device. Although SDG is simple in concept, there are surprisingly many problems in how interactions within SDG are managed. One problem is the potential for interference, where one person can raise an interface component (such as a menu or dialog box) in a way that hinders what another person is doing i.e., by obscuring another person's working area that happens to be underneath the raised component. We propose transparent interface components as one possible solution to interference: while one person can raise and interact with the component, others can see through it and can continue to work underneath it. To test this concept, we first implemented a simple SDG game using both opaque and transparent SDG menus. Through a controlled experiment, we then analyzed how interference affects peoples' performance across an opaque and transparent menu condition: a solo condition (where a person played alone) acts as our control. Our results show that the transparent menu did lessen the effect of interference, and that SDG players overwhelmingly preferred it to opaque menus.