Augmenting the scope of interactions with implicit and explicit graphical structures
Raphaël Hoarau, Stéphane Conversy · 2012
When using interactive graphical tools, users often have to manage a structure, i.e. the arrangement of and relations between the parts or elements of the content. However, interaction with structures may be complex and not well integrated with interaction with the content. Based on contextual inquiries and past work, we have identified a number of requirements for the interaction with graphical structures. We have designed and explored two interactive tools that rely on implicit and explicit structures: ManySpector, an inspector for multiple objects that help visualize and interact with used values; and links that users can draw between object properties to provide a dependency. The interactions with the tools augment the scope of interactions to multiple objects. A study showed that users understood the interactions and could use them to perform complex graphical tasks.