Paper Reading #17 - UIMarks: Quick Graphical Interaction with Specific Targets

Comments:


Reference:
UIMarks: Quick Graphical Interaction with Specific Targets
Olivier Chapuis, Nicolas Roussel
UIST 2010

Summary:

UIMarks is a system that allows users to set targets and associated actions on a screen by using a graphical marking language.  It aims to supplement the current pointing system instead of replacing it.  This system uses marks, uniquely identafiable objects that are placed on the screen in an (x,y) location and are charicterized by their creator, their target, and their lifetime.  Each mark has a primary action that is triggered when the mark is activated, but it can also have preceding and following actions.  The configuration of a mark can be complicated as it involves both keyboard and mouse manipulation. 

Twelve participants were used to test UIMarks.  As expected, the size and distance of the targets affected the interaction speed of both UIMarks (UIM) and the standard pointing system (STD).  In almost all categories, UIM performed better than the STD pointer in terms of speed, with an even greater advantage when small targets were used.  It performed worse than STD in situations where it was being used like a normal pointer system and not taking advantage of its capabilities.  This study was entirely focused on effeciency of the system, so other criteria like learnability or memorability were not considered. 

Discussion:

While I see this technology being useful at a later date, at this point it is more or less in an experimental stage.  The paper is written in a very technical form, so it was hard to get excited about UIMarks.  As learnability and memorability are not really being considered at this point, I have to wonder if this system will eventually be intuitive or just prove to be another confusing layer of abstraction.  Time will tell, but I do hope they get it right.