Designing Novel Visualization and Interaction Techniques that Scale from Small to Jumbo Displays April 9, 2004

Location: 34-401B (Grier B) Map

Abstract: An important research goal for our community is to design effective visualization and interaction techniques that span the full spectrum of devices and displays. We have been studying how end users actually interact with user interface elements on small to very large displays, with an eye toward important opportunities for innovation and redesign. We have observed that many user interface designs do not scale well to the available screen real estate. Windows can be hard to access on very small or very large display configurations. Windows management becomes more problematic for display sizes at the ends of the continuum and windows are often improperly sized for their contents or the available screen real estate. Very small displays are often hard to navigate and do not typically provide useful overviews. To address these issues, our research group has worked to position and scale the presentation of a user's information clusters appropriately for the real estate and devices available. I will provide an overview of a few of our solutions for how to make important content available and easy to interact with on any device, and on any surface. This is an area of human-computer interaction research that is ripe for investigation, and I hope to challenge and inspire others to explore it---hardware advances often drive innovation in software user interface design.

Bio: Mary Czerwinski is a Senior Researcher and Manager of the Visualization and Interaction Research group at Microsoft Research. The group is responsible for studying and designing advanced technology and interaction techniques that leverage human capabilities across a wide variety of input and output channels. Mary's primary research areas include spatial cognition, information visualization and task switching. Mary has been an affiliate assistant professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Washington since 1996. She has also held positions at Compaq Computer Corporation, Rice University, Lockheed Engineering and Sciences Corporation, and Bell Communications Research. She received a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Indiana University in Bloomington. Mary is active in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, publishing and participating in a wide number of conferences, professional venues and journals. More information about Dr. Czerwinski can be found at http://research.microsoft.com/users/marycz.

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