Ben Shneiderman
Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
& Department of Computer Science
University of Maryland
Web3D: Phoenix, February 26, 2002
or Not 3D:
When and Why Does it Work?
Ben Shneiderman
Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
& Department of Computer Science
University of Maryland
Web3D: Phoenix, February 26, 2002
Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
Interdisciplinary research community
- Computer Science & Psychology
- Information Studies & Education
www.cs.umd.edu/hcil
Scientific Approach (beyond user friendly)
 Specify users and tasks
 Predict and measure
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time to learn
speed of performance
rate of human errors
human retention over time
 Assess subjective satisfaction
(Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction)
 Accommodate individual differences
 Consider social, organizational & cultural context
Design Issues
 Input devices & strategies
• Keyboards, pointing devices, voice
• Direct manipulation
• Menus, forms, commands
 Output devices & formats
• Screens, windows, color, sound
• Text, tables, graphics
• Instructions, messages, help
 Collaboration & communities
 Manuals, tutorials, training
www.awl.com/DTUI
usableweb.com
useit.com
Library of Congress
 Scholars, Journalists, Citizens
 Teachers, Students
Visible Human Explorer (NLM)
 Doctors
 Surgeons
 Researchers
 Students
NASA Environmental Data
 Scientists
 Farmers
 Land planners
 Students
Bureau of Census
 Economists, Policy
makers, Journalists
 Teachers, Students
Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think
 Visual bandwidth is enormous
• Human perceptual skills are remarkable
• Trend, cluster, gap, outlier...
• Color, size, shape, proximity...
• Human image storage is fast and vast
 Opportunities
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Spatial layouts & coordination
Information visualization
Scientific visualization & simulation
Telepresence & augmented reality
Virtual environments
www.spotfire.com
www.spotfire.com
Fisheye views and Zooming User Interfaces
 Distortion to magnify areas of interest
User-control, zoom factors of 3-5
 Multi-scale spaces
Zoom in/out & Pan left/right
 Smooth zooming
 Semantic zooming
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/jazz/
GlassEye
(see Hochheiser paper in www.cs.umd.edu/hcil)
Spectrum of 3-D Visualizations
 Immersive Virtual Environment
with head-mounted stereo display and head tracking
 Desktop 3-D for 3-D worlds
• medical, architectural, scientific visualizations, games
 Desktop 3-D for artificial worlds
• Bookhouse, file-cabinets, shopping malls
 Desktop 3-D for information visualization
• cone/cam trees, perspective wall, web-book
• SGI directories, Visible Decisions, Media Lab landscapes
• XGobi scatterplots, Themescape, Visage
 Chartjunk 3-D: barcharts, piecharts, histograms
Medical & Scientific Visualizations
 Volume Visualization for Medical
SUNY – Stony Brook
http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~vislab/
 Electronic Visualization Laboratory
University of Illinois at Chicago
http://www.evl.uic.edu/
Commercial Visualizations
Information & Entertainment
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3D Home pages, chat rooms
www.ActiveWorlds.com
 IPIX 3D room tours
www.ipix.com
Are these good uses of 3D?
Communication networks
www.netviz.com
Network Connection & Performance
J.A. Brown, McGregor A.J and H-W Braun.
Planar graph with towers
Chaomei Chen
www.cognos.com
www.visualinsights.com
Perspective wall (Xerox PARC)
Mackinlay et al, CHI91
ConeTree
Xerox Park
Hyperbolic trees
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Visually appealing
Space limited
2-level lookahead
Easy affordances
-Hard to scan
-Poor screen usage
-Too volatile
Lamping et al. CHI 95
Treemap - view large trees with node values
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Space filling
Space limited
Color coding
Size coding
Requires learning
TreeViz (Mac, Johnson, 1992)
NBA-Tree(Sun, Turo, 1993)
Winsurfer (Teittinen, 1996)
Diskmapper (Windows, Micrologic)
Treemap97 (Windows, UMd)
Treemap 3.0 (Java, UMd)
(Shneiderman, see www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemaps)
Treemap - Stock market, clustered by industry
see www.smartmoney.com
Treemap - Stock market – 3D view
WebBook
WebBook-WebForager
Card, Robertson, George and York, CHI 96
Starlight
Battelle – Pacific Northwest National Lab
Themescape
Wise et al., 1995
- see also www.omniviz.com
Mineset
IBM Research: 3D Objects & Ecological Design
3-D objects &
ecological setting
speed performance
by 10-20%
Ark, Dryer, Selker
& Zhai
British HCI 1998
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IBM Research: RealThings
Familiar 3-D objects
replace form-fillin
www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/581
www.otal.umd.edu/SHORE99/daveyg/
Microsoft: Data Mountain
3-D perspective & size
changes cause no
significant slowdown
and users like them
Cockburn & McKenzie, ACM CHI2001
Microsoft: Task Gallery
http://research.microsoft.com/ui/TaskGallery/
Chalmers Univ: 3D Workspace Manager
http://www.3dwm.org/
Clockwise3d
http://www.clockwise3d.com/
Clockwise3d vs. Windows Explorer
UMd Student
Team Project
-12 subjects
-12 tasks
Fewer clicks
is faster
www.otal.umd.edu/SHORE2001/winDesktop/
Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
19th Annual Symposium
May 30-31, 2002
www.cs.umd.edu/hcil
For More Information
 Visit the HCIL website for 200 papers & info on videos
(www.cs.umd.edu/hcil)
 See Chapter 15 on Info Visualization
Shneiderman, B., Designing the User Interface:
Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction:
Third Edition (1998) (www.aw.com/DTUI)
 January 1999 book of readings:
Card, S., Mackinlay, J., and Shneiderman, B.
Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think