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VisualIDs: automatic distinctive icons for desktop interfaces

Authors:

Ruth Rosenholtz,

Ulrich NeumannAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), Volume 23, Issue 3

Pages 416 - 423

https://doi.org/10.1145/1015706.1015739

Published: 01 August 2004 Publication History

Abstract

Although existing GUIs have a sense of space, they provide no sense of place. Numerous studies report that users misplace files and have trouble wayfinding in virtual worlds despite the fact that people have remarkable visual and spatial abilities. This issue is considered in the human-computer interface field and has been addressed with alternate display/navigation schemes. Our paper presents a fundamentally graphics based approach to this 'lost in hyperspace' problem. Specifically, we propose that spatial display of files is not sufficient to engage our visual skills; scenery (distinctive visual appearance) is needed as well. While scenery (in the form of custom icon assignments) is already possible in current operating systems, few if any users take the time to manually assign icons to all their files. As such, our proposal is to generate visually distinctive icons ("VisualIDs") automatically, while allowing the user to replace the icon if desired. The paper discusses psychological and conceptual issues relating to icons, visual memory, and the necessary relation of scenery to data. A particular icon generation algorithm is described; subjects using these icons in simulated file search and recall tasks show significantly improved performance with little effort. Although the incorporation of scenery in a graphical user interface will introduce many new (and interesting) design problems that cannot be addressed in this paper, we show that automatically created scenery is both beneficial and feasible.

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Cited By

Shen ICherng FIgarashi TLin WChen B(2023)EvIcon: Designing High‐Usability Icon with Human‐in‐the‐loop Exploration and IconCLIPComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1492442:6Online publication date: 19-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14924
Atzberger DCech TScheibel WLimberger DDöllner J(2023)Visualization of Source Code Similarity Using 2.5D Semantic Software MapsComputer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications10.1007/978-3-031-25477-2_8(162-182)Online publication date: 2-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25477-2_8
Huang FCanny JGuimbretière FBernstein MReinecke K(2019)SketchformeProceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3332165.3347878(209-220)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3332165.3347878
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Index Terms

VisualIDs: automatic distinctive icons for desktop interfaces
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Graphical user interfaces

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Graphics

ACM Transactions on Graphics Volume 23, Issue 3

August 2004

684 pages

ISSN:0730-0301

EISSN:1557-7368

DOI:10.1145/1015706

Editor:
John C. Hart

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2004 ACM.

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]

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Publication History

Published: 01 August 2004

Published in TOG Volume 23, Issue 3

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Cited By

Shen ICherng FIgarashi TLin WChen B(2023)EvIcon: Designing High‐Usability Icon with Human‐in‐the‐loop Exploration and IconCLIPComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1492442:6Online publication date: 19-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14924
Atzberger DCech TScheibel WLimberger DDöllner J(2023)Visualization of Source Code Similarity Using 2.5D Semantic Software MapsComputer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications10.1007/978-3-031-25477-2_8(162-182)Online publication date: 2-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25477-2_8
Huang FCanny JGuimbretière FBernstein MReinecke K(2019)SketchformeProceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3332165.3347878(209-220)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3332165.3347878
Lagunas MGarces EGutierrez D(2019)Learning icons appearance similarityMultimedia Tools and Applications10.1007/s11042-018-6628-778:8(10733-10751)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11042-018-6628-7
Uddin MGutwin CCockburn AMark GFussell SLampe Cschraefel mHourcade JAppert CWigdor D(2017)The Effects of Artificial Landmarks on Learning and Performance in Spatial-Memory InterfacesProceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3025453.3025497(3843-3855)Online publication date: 2-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3025453.3025497
Roy RSingh AChawla PSaxena SSinha A(2017)Automatic Assignment of Topical Icons to Documents for Faster File Navigation2017 14th IAPR International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR)10.1109/ICDAR.2017.220(1338-1345)Online publication date: Nov-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDAR.2017.220
Laursen LKoyama YChen HGarces EGutierrez DHarper RIgarashi TBajaj CErtl TNishita TGrinspun EBickel BDobashi Y(2016)Icon set selection via human computationProceedings of the 24th Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications: Short Papers10.5555/3061425.3061426(1-6)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3061425.3061426
Uddin MHancock MMarquardt NSchöning JTory M(2016)Use of Landmarks to Design Large and Efficient Command InterfacesProceedings of the 2016 ACM Companion on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces10.1145/3009939.3009942(13-17)Online publication date: 6-Nov-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3009939.3009942
Fernandez IBergel AAlcocer JInfante AGirba T(2016)Glyph-based software component identification2016 IEEE 24th International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC)10.1109/ICPC.2016.7503713(1-10)Online publication date: May-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPC.2016.7503713
Bernstein GLi W(2015)LilliconACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/276698034:4(1-11)Online publication date: 27-Jul-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2766980
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