Interaction technique: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:00, 26 March 2014

Revision as of 01:22, 26 March 2014

Line 32:

From the user interface designer's perspective, an interaction technique is a well-defined solution to a specific [[user interface design]] problem. Interaction techniques as conceptual ideas can be refined, extended, modified and combined. For example, [[contextual menu]]s are a solution to the problem of rapidly selecting commands. [[Pie menus]] are a radial variant of [[contextual menu]]s. [[Marking menu]]s combine pie menus with [[gesture recognition]].

<div id="levelslevel of granularity"></div>

=== Level of granularity ===

One extant cause of confusion in the general discussion of interaction is a lack of clarity about levels of granularity<ref name="spdh">Sedig, K., Parsons, P., Dittmer, M., & Haworth, R. (2013). Human–centered interactivity of visualization tools: Micro– and macro–level considerations. In W. Huang (Ed.), Handbook of Human-Centric Visualization (pp. 717–743). Springer, New York.</ref>[http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-7485-2_29]. Interaction techniques are usually characterized at a low level of granularity--not necessarily at the lowest level of physical events, but at a level that is technology-, platform-, and/or implementation-dependent. For example, interaction techniques exist that are specific to mobile devices, touch-based displays, traditional mouse/keyboard inputs, and other paradigms--in other words, they are dependent on a specific technology or platform. In contrast, viewed at higher levels of granularity, the interaction is not tied to to any specific technology or platform. The interaction of 'filtering', for example, can be characterized in a way that is technology-independent--e.g., performing an action such that some information is hidden and only a subset of the original information remains. Such an interaction could be implemented using any number of techniques, and on any number of platforms and technologies<ref name="sp"></ref>. See also the discussion of [[#interaction patterns]] below.

Interaction techniques are usually fine-grained entities. For example, a [[desktop environment]] is too complex to be an interaction technique, whereas [[Exposé (Mac OS X)|Exposé]] fits the common intuitive understanding of the term perfectly well. Also, a graph may have a large disparity between the lowest and highest values along the [[Y-axis|Y-Axis]] and unable to display clarity, so the [[Harrison Curve]], some what similar in nature to a standard linear zoom, allows the user to distort the focual area to their benefit {{Clarify|date=March 2012}}. In general, a user interface can be seen as a combination of many interaction techniques, some of which are not necessarily as explicit as [[GUI widget|widgets]].

== Interaction tasks and ___domain objects ==

Line 54:

Interaction techniques that share the same [[Interface metaphor|metaphor]] or design principles can be seen as belonging to the same [http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/interaction_styles.html interaction style]. General examples are [[Command line interface|command line]] and [[direct manipulation]] user interfaces.

<div id="interaction patterns"></div>

== Interaction patterns ==

While interaction techniques are typically technology-, platform-, and/or implementation-dependent (see [[#levelslevel of granularity]] above), human-computer or human-information interactions can be characterized at higher levels of abstraction that are independent of particular technologies and platforms. At such levels of abstraction, the concern is not precisely how an interaction is performed; rather, the concern is a conceptual characterization of what the interaction is, and what the general utility of the interaction is for the user(s). Thus, any single interaction pattern may be instantiated by any number of interaction techniques, on any number of different technologies and platforms. Interaction patterns are more concerned with the timeless, invariant qualities of an interaction.<ref name="sp">Sedig, K. & Parsons, P. (2013). Interaction design for complex cognitive activities with visual representations: A pattern-based approach. AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 5(2), 84–133.</ref>[http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1057&context=thci [<nowiki>]</nowiki>]

== Visualization technique ==