Catherine Plaisant
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"C. Plaisant"
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Publications by Catherine Plaisant (bibliography)
» 2008 «
Wang, Taowei David, Plaisant, Catherine, Quinn, Alexander J., Stanchak, Roman, Murphy, Shawn and Shneiderman, Ben (2008): Aligning temporal data by sentinel events: discovering patterns in electronic health records. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 5-10, 2008. pp. 457-466. Available online
“Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and other temporal databases contain hidden patterns that reveal important cause-and-effect phenomena. Finding these patterns is a challenge when using traditional query languages and tabular displays. We present an interactive visual tool that complements query formulation by providing operations to align, rank and filter the results, and to visualize estimates of the intervals of validity of the data. Display of patient histories aligned on sentinel events (such as a first heart attack) enables users to spot precursor, co-occurring, and aftereffect events. A controlled study demonstrates the benefits of providing alignment (with a 61% speed improvement for complex tasks). A qualitative study and interviews with medical professionals demonstrates that the interface can be learned quickly and seems to address their needs.”
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Bertini, Enrico, Perer, Adam, Plaisant, Catherine and Santucci, Giuseppe (2008): BELIV'08: Beyond time and errors: novel evaluation methods for information visualization. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 5-10, 2008. pp. 3913-3916. Available online
“Information visualization systems allow users to produce insights, innovations and discoveries. Evaluating such tools is a challenging task and the goal of BELIV'08 is to make a step ahead in the comprehension of such a complex activity. Current evaluation methods exhibit noticeable limitations and researchers in the area experiment some frustration with evaluation processes that are time consuming and too often leading to unsatisfactory results. The most used evaluation metrics such as task time completion and number of errors appear insufficient to quantify the quality of an information visualization system; thus the name of the workshop: "beyond time and errors".”
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Zhao, Haixia, Plaisant, Catherine, Shneiderman, Ben and Lazar, Jonathan (2008): Data Sonification for Users with Visual Impairment: A Case Study with Georeferenced Data. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 15 (1) p. 4
“We describe the development and evaluation of a tool, iSonic, to assist users with visual impairment in exploring georeferenced data using coordinated maps and tables, augmented with nontextual sounds and speech output. Our in-depth case studies with 7 blind users during 42 hours of data collection, showed that iSonic enabled them to find facts and discover trends in georeferenced data, even in unfamiliar geographical contexts, without special devices. Our design was guided by an Action-by-Design-Component (ADC) framework, which was also applied to scatterplots to demonstrate its generalizability. Video and download is available at www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/iSonic/.”
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» 2007 «
Plaisant, Catherine and North, Chris (2007): Special Issue in Honor of Ben Shneiderman's 60th Birthday: Reflections on Human-Computer Interaction. In International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 23 (3) pp. 195-204
Bertini, Enrico, Plaisant, Catherine and Santucci, Giuseppe (2007): BELIV'06: beyond time and errors; novel evaluation methods for information visualization. In Interactions, 14 (3) pp. 59-60
Don, Anthony, Zheleva, Elena, Gregory, Machon, Tarkan, Sureyya, Auvil, Loretta, Clement, Tanya, Shneiderman, Ben and Plaisant, Catherine (2007): Discovering interesting usage patterns in text collections: integrating text mining with visualization. In: Silva, Mario J., Laender, Alberto H. F., Baeza-Yates, Ricardo A., McGuinness, Deborah L., Olstad, Bjørn, Olsen, Øystein Haug and Falcão, André O. (eds.) Proceedings of the Sixteenth ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management - CIKM 2007 November 6-10, 2007, Lisbon, Portugal. pp. 213-222. Available online
Buono, Paolo, Plaisant, Catherine, Simeone, Adalberto Lafcadio, Aris, Aleks, Shmueli, Galit and Jank, Wolfgang (2007): Similarity-Based Forecasting with Simultaneous Previews: A River Plot Interface for Time Series Forecasting. In: IV 2007 - 11th International Conference on Information Visualisation 2-6 July, 2007, Zürich, Switzerland. pp. 191-196. Available online
» 2006 «
Plaisant, Catherine, Rose, James, Yu, Bei, Auvil, Loretta, Kirschenbaum, Matthew G., Smith, Martha Nell, Clement, Tanya and Lord, Greg (2006): Exploring erotics in Emily Dickinson's correspondence with text mining and visual interfaces. In: JCDL06: Proceedings of the 6th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2006. pp. 141-150. Available online
“This paper describes a system to support humanities scholars in their interpretation of literary work. It presents a user interface and web architecture that integrates text mining, a graphical user interface and visualization, while attempting to remain easy to use by non specialists. Users can interactively read and rate documents found in a digital libraries collection, prepare training sets, review results of classification algorithms and explore possible indicators and explanations. Initial evaluation steps suggest that there is a rationale for "provocational" text mining in literary interpretation.”
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Kang, Hyunmo, Plaisant, Catherine, Lee, Bongshin and Bederson, Benjamin B. (2006): Exploring content-actor paired network data using iterative query refinement with NetLens. In: JCDL06: Proceedings of the 6th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2006. p. 372. Available online
“Networks have remained a challenge for information retrieval and visualization because of the rich set of tasks that users want to accomplish. This paper demonstrates a tool, NetLens, to explore a Content-Actor paired network data model. The NetLens interface was designed to allow users to pose a series of elementary queries and iteratively refine visual overviews and sorted lists. This enables the support of complex queries that are traditionally hard to specify in node-link visualizations. NetLens is general and scalable in that it applies to any dataset that can be represented with our abstract Content-Actor data model.”
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Plaisant, Catherine, Clamage, Aaron, Hutchinson, Hilary Browne, Bederson, Benjamin B. and Druin, Allison (2006): Shared family calendars: Promoting symmetry and accessibility. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 13 (3) pp. 313-346
“We describe the design and use of a system facilitating the sharing of calendar information between remotely located, multi-generational family members. Most previous work in this area involves software enabling younger family members to monitor their parents. We have found, however, that older adults are equally if not more interested in the activities of younger family members. The major obstacle preventing them from participating in information sharing is the technology itself. Therefore, we developed a multi-layered interface approach that offers simple interaction to older users. In our system, users can choose to enter information into a computerized calendar or write it by hand on digital paper calendars. All of the information is automatically shared among everyone in the distributed family. By making the interface more accessible to older users, we promote symmetrical sharing of information among both older and younger family members. We present our participatory design process, describe the user interface, and report on an exploratory field study in three households of an extended family.”
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Bertini, Enrico, Plaisant, Catherine and Santucci, Giuseppe (eds.) BELIV 2006 - Proceedings of the 2006 AVI Workshop on BEyond time and errors novel evaluation methods for information visualization May 23, 2006, Venice, Italy.
Shneiderman, Ben and Plaisant, Catherine (2006): Strategies for evaluating information visualization tools: multi-dimensional in-depth long-term case studies. In: Bertini, Enrico, Plaisant, Catherine and Santucci, Giuseppe (eds.) BELIV 2006 - Proceedings of the 2006 AVI Workshop on BEyond time and errors novel evaluation methods for information visualization May 23, 2006, Venice, Italy. pp. 1-7. Available online
Lee, Bongshin, Plaisant, Catherine, Parr, Cynthia Sims, Fekete, Jean-Daniel and Henry, Nathalie (2006): Task taxonomy for graph visualization. In: Bertini, Enrico, Plaisant, Catherine and Santucci, Giuseppe (eds.) BELIV 2006 - Proceedings of the 2006 AVI Workshop on BEyond time and errors novel evaluation methods for information visualization May 23, 2006, Venice, Italy. pp. 1-5. Available online
Marchionini, Gary, Haas, Stephanie W., Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (2006): Integrating data and interfaces to enhance understanding of government statistics: toward the national statistical knowledge network project briefing. In: Fortes, José A. B. and MacIntosh, Ann (eds.) DG.O 2006 - Proceedings of the 7th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research May 21-24, 2006, San Diego, California, USA. pp. 334-335. Available online
» 2005 «
Zhao, Haixia, Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (2005): iSonic: interactive sonification for non-visual data exploration. In: Seventh Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies 2005. pp. 194-195. Available online
“iSonic is an interactive sonification tool for vision impaired users to explore geo-referenced statistical data, such as population or crime rates by geographical regions. Users use a keyboard or a smooth surface touchpad to interact with coordinated map and table views of the data. The integrated use of musical sounds and speech allows users to grasp the overall data trends and to explore the data to get more details. Scenarios of use are described.”
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Zhao, Haixia, Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (2005): "I hear the pattern": interactive sonification of geographical data patterns. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2005 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2005. pp. 1905-1908. Available online
“Interactive sonification (non-speech sound) is a novel strategy to present the geographical distribution patterns of statistical data to vision impaired users. We discuss the design space with dimensions of interaction actions, data representation forms, input devices, navigation structures, and sound feedback encoding. Two interfaces were designed, one using a keyboard and another using a smooth surface touch tablet. A study with three blind users shows that they are able to perceive patterns of 5-category values on both familiar and unknown maps, and learn new map geography, in both interfaces.”
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Aris, A., Shneiderman, Ben, Plaisant, Catherine, Shmueli, G. and Jank, W. (2005): Representing Unevenly-Spaced Time Series Data for Visualization and Interactive Exploration. In: Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT05: Human-Computer Interaction 2005. pp. 835-846. Available online
“Visualizing time series is useful to support discovery of relations and patterns in financial, genomic, medical and other applications. Often, measurements are equally spaced over time. We discuss the challenges of unevenly-spaced time series and present fourrepresentationmethods: sampled events, aggregated sampled events, event index and interleaved event index. We developed these methods while studying eBay auction data with TimeSearcher. We describe the advantages, disadvantages, choices for algorithms and parameters, and compare the different methods for different tasks. Interaction issues such as screen resolution, response time for dynamic queries, and learnability are governed by these decisions.”
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Eaton, C., Plaisant, Catherine and Drizd, T. (2005): Visualizing Missing Data: Graph Interpretation User Study. In: Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT05: Human-Computer Interaction 2005. pp. 861-872. Available online
“Most visualization tools fail to provide support for missing data. In this paper, we identify sources of missing data and describe three levels of impact missing data can have on the visualization: perceivable, invisible or propagating. We then report on a user study with 30 participants that compared three design variants. A between-subject graph interpretation study provides strong evidence for the need of indicating the presence of missing information, and some direction for addressing the problem.”
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Shneiderman, Ben and Plaisant, Catherine (2005): Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (4th ed.). Addison-Wesley
Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (2005): Show Me! Guidelines for Producing Recorded Demonstrations. In: VL-HCC 2005 - IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing 21-24 September, 2005, Dallas, TX, USA. pp. 171-178. Available online
Marchionini, Gary, Haas, Stephanie W., Shneiderman, Ben, Plaisant, Catherine and Hert, Carol A. (2005): Project highlight: toward a statistical knowledge network--2004-05. In: Delcambre, Lois M. L. and Giuliano, Genevieve (eds.) DG.O 2005 - Proceedings of the 2005 National Conference on Digital Government Research May 15-18, 2005, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. pp. 177-178. Available online
» 2004 «
Kules, Bill, Kang, Hyunmo, Plaisant, Catherine, Rose, Anne and Shneiderman, Ben (2004): Immediate usability: a case study of public access design for a community photo library. In Interacting with Computers, 16 (6) pp. 1171-1193
“This paper describes a novel instantiation of a digital photo library in a public access system. It demonstrates how designers can utilize characteristics of a target user community (social constraints, trust, and a lack of anonymity) to provide capabilities, such as unrestricted annotation and uploading of photos, which would be impractical in other types of public access systems. It also presents a compact set of design principles and guidelines for ensuring the immediate usability of public access information systems. These principles and guidelines were derived from our experience developing PhotoFinder Kiosk, a community photo library. Attendees of a major HCI conference (CHI 2001 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) successfully used the tool to browse and annotate collections of photographs spanning 20 years of HCI-related conferences, producing a richly annotated photo history of the field of human-computer interaction. Observations and usage log data were used to evaluate the tool and develop the guidelines. They provide specific guidance for practitioners, as well as a useful framework for additional research in public access interfaces.”
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Shneiderman, Ben and Plaisant, Catherine (2004): Designing the User Interface : Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction. Addison-Wesley Publishing
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Chintalapani, Gouthami, Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (2004): Extending the Utility of Treemaps with Flexible Hierarchy. In: IV 2004 - 8th International Conference on Information Visualisation 14-16 July, 2004, London, UK. pp. 335-344. Available online
Plaisant, Catherine (2004): The challenge of information visualization evaluation. In: Costabile, Maria Francesca (ed.) AVI 2004 - Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces May 25-28, 2004, Gallipoli, Italy. pp. 109-116. Available online
Marchionini, Gary, Haas, Stephanie W., Shneiderman, Ben, Plaisant, Catherine and Hert, Carol A. (2004): Toward the National Statistical Knowledge Network. In: DG.O 2004 2004. . Available online
» 2003 «
Hutchinson, Hilary, Mackay, Wendy E., Westerlund, Bosse, Bederson, Benjamin B., Druin, Allison, Plaisant, Catherine, Beaudouin-Lafon, Michel, Conversy, Stephane and Eiderback, Bjorn (2003): Technology probes: inspiring design for and with families. In: Cockton, Gilbert and Korhonen, Panu (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2003 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 5-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. pp. 17-24.
Hornbæk, Kasper, Bederson, Benjamin B. and Plaisant, Catherine (2003): Navigation patterns & usability of zoomable user interfaces: with and without an overview. In Interactions, 10 (1) pp. 11-12
Plaisant, Catherine, Kang, H. and Shneiderman, Ben (2003): Helping users get started with visual interfaces: multi-layered interfaces, integrated initial guidance and video demonstrations. In: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2003. pp. 790-794.
Grinstein, Georges G., Kobsa, Alfred, Plaisant, Catherine, Shneiderman, Ben and Stasko, John T. (2003): Which Comes First, Utility or Usability?. In: Turk, Greg, Wijk, Jarke J. van and II, Robert J. Moorhead (eds.) 14th IEEE Visualization 2003 Conference VIS 2003 19-24 October, 2003, Seattle, WA, USA. pp. 605-606.
Kang, Hyunmo, Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (2003): Helping Users Get Started with Visual Interfaces: Multi-Layered Interfaces, Integrated Initial Guidance and Video Demonstrations. In: DG.O 2003 2003. . Available online
Kang, Hyunmo, Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (2003): New Approaches to Help Users Get Started with Visual Interfaces: Multi-Layered Interfaces and Integrated Initial Guidance. In: DG.O 2003 2003. . Available online
Kules, Bill, Shneiderman, Ben and Plaisant, Catherine (2003): Data Exploration with Paired Hierarchical Visualizations: Initial Designs of Pair Trees. In: DG.O 2003 2003. . Available online
Marchionini, Gary, Haas, Stephanie W., Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (2003): Toward a Statistical Knowledge Network. In: DG.O 2003 2003. . Available online
Zhao, Haixia, Shneiderman, Ben and Plaisant, Catherine (2003): Improving Accessibility and Usability of Geo-referenced Statistical Data. In: DG.O 2003 2003. . Available online
Zhao, Haixia, Shneiderman, Ben, Plaisant, Catherine, Zotkin, Dmitry N. and Duraiswami, Ramani (2003): Improving Accessibility and Usability of Geo-referenced Statistical Data. In: DG.O 2003 2003. . Available online
» 2002 «
Shneiderman, Ben, Kang, Hyunmo, Kules, Bill, Plaisant, Catherine, Rose, Anne and Rucheir, Richesh (2002): A photo history of SIGCHI: evolution of design from personal to public. In Interactions, 9 (3) pp. 17-23
Hornbæk, Kasper, Bederson, Benjamin B. and Plaisant, Catherine (2002): Navigation patterns and usability of zoomable user interfaces with and without an overview. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 9 (4) pp. 362-389
“The literature on information visualization establishes the usability of interfaces with an overview of the information space, but for zoomable user interfaces, results are mixed. We compare zoomable user interfaces with and without an overview to understand the navigation patterns and usability of these interfaces. Thirty-two subjects solved navigation and browsing tasks on two maps. We found no difference between interfaces in subjects' ability to solve tasks correctly. Eighty percent of the subjects preferred the interface with an overview, stating that it supported navigation and helped keep track of their position on the map. However, subjects were faster with the interface without an overview when using one of the two maps. We conjecture that this difference was due to the organization of that map in multiple levels, which rendered the overview unnecessary by providing richer navigation cues through semantic zooming. The combination of that map and the interface without an overview also improved subjects' recall of objects on the map. Subjects who switched between the overview and the detail windows used more time, suggesting that integration of overview and detail windows adds complexity and requires additional mental and motor effort.”
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Fekete, Jean-Daniel and Plaisant, Catherine (2002): Interactive Information Visualization of a Million Items. In: InfoVis 2002 - 2002 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization 27 October - 1 November, 2002, Boston, MA, USA. pp. 117-. Available online
Plaisant, Catherine, Grosjean, Jesse and Bederson, Benjamin B. (2002): SpaceTree: Supporting Exploration in Large Node Link Tree, Design Evolution and Empirical Evaluation. In: InfoVis 2002 - 2002 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization 27 October - 1 November, 2002, Boston, MA, USA. pp. 57-. Available online
» 2001 «
Okoye, B., Ntuen, Celestine A. and Plaisant, Catherine (2001): A Functionalist Approach to Usability Evaluation of Adaptive Learning Environment. In: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2001. pp. 894-897.
Winchester, W. W., Ntuen, C. A., Plaisant, Catherine and Reeves, L. (2001): Lessons Learned from Usability Analysis of Adaptive Learning Simulation Environment. In: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2001. pp. 898-902.
Konishi, M., Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (2001): Enabling Commuters to Find the Best Route: An Interface for Analyzing Driving History Logs. In: Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT01: Human-Computer Interaction 2001, Tokyo, Japan. pp. 799-800.
» 2000 «
Tanin, Egemen, Lotem, Amnon, Haddadin, Ihab, Shneiderman, Ben, Plaisant, Catherine and Slaughter, Laura (2000): Facilitating Data Exploration with Query Previews: A Study of User Performance and Preference. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 19 (6) pp. 393-403
“Networked and local data exploration systems that use command languages, menus, or form fill-in interfaces rarely give users an indication of the distribution of data. This often leads users to waste time, posing queries that have zero-hit or mega-hit results. Query previews are a novel visual approach for browsing databases. Query previews supply users with data distribution information for selected attributes of the database, and give continuous feedback about the size of the result set as the query is being formed. Subsequent refinements might be necessary to narrow the search. As there is a risk that query previews are an additional step, leading to a more complex and slow search process, a within-subjects empirical study was ran with 12 subjects who used interfaces with and without query previews and with minimized network delays. Even with 12 subjects and minimized network delays statistically significant differences were found, showing that query previews could speed up performance 1.6 to 2.1 times and lead to higher user satisfaction.”
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Plaisant, Catherine, Druin, Allison, Lathan, Corinna, Dakhane, Kapil, Edwards, Kris, Vice, Jack Maxwell and Montemayor, Jaime (2000): A Storytelling Robot for Pediatric Rehabilitation. In: Fourth Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies 2000. pp. 50-55. Available online
“We are developing a prototype storytelling robot for use with children in rehabilitation. Children can remotely control a large furry robot by using a variety of body sensors adapted to their disability or rehabilitation goal. In doing so, they can teach the robot to act out series of movements or "emotions" and then write stories -- using a storytelling software -- including those movements in the story. The story can then be "played" by the remote controlled robot, which acts out the story. We believe that this robot can motivate the children and help them reach their therapy goals through therapeutic play, either by exercising muscles or joints (e.g. for physically challenges children) or by reflecting on the stories (e.g. for children with developmental disabilities). We use an innovative design methodology involving children as design partners.”
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Greene, Stephan, Marchionini, Gary, Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (2000): Previews and overviews in digital libraries: Designing surrogates to support visual information seeking. In JASIST - Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 51 (4) pp. 380-393
» 1999 «
Fekete, Jean-Daniel and Plaisant, Catherine (1999): Excentric Labeling: Dynamic Neighborhood Labeling for Data Visualization. In: Altom, Mark W. and Williams, Marian G. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 99 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. pp. 512-519. Available online
“The widespread use of information visualization is hampered by the lack of effective labeling techniques. An informal taxonomy of labeling methods is proposed. We then describe "excentric labeling", a new dynamic technique to label a neighborhood of objects located around the cursor. This technique does not intrude into the existing interaction, it is not computationally intensive, and was easily applied to several visualization applications. A pilot study with eight subjects indicates a strong speed benefit over a zoom interface for tasks that involve the exploration of large numbers of objects. Observations and comments from users are presented.”
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Plaisant, Catherine, Shneiderman, Ben, Doan, Khoa and Bruns, Tom (1999): Interface and data architecture for query preview in networked information systems. In ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 17 (3) pp. 320-341
“There are numerous problems associated with formulating queries on networked information systems. These include increased data volume and complexity, accompanied by slow network access. This article proposes a new approach to a network query user interfaces that consists of two phases: query preview and query refinement. This new approach is based on the concepts of dynamic queries and query previews, which guides users in rapidly and dynamically eliminating undesired records, reducing the data volume to a manageable size, and refining queries locally before submission over a network. Examples of two applications are given: a Restaurant Finder and a prototype for NASA's Earth Observing Systems Data Information Systems (EOSDIS). Data architecture is discussed, and user feedback is presented.”
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» 1998 «
Alonso, Diane Lindwarm, Rose, Anne, Plaisant, Catherine and Norman, Kent L. (1998): Viewing Personal History Records: A Comparison of Tabular Format and Graphical Presentation Using LifeLines. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 17 (5) pp. 249-262
“Thirty-six participants used a static version of either LifeLines, a graphical interface, or a tabular representation to answer questions about a database of temporal personal history information. Results suggest that overall the LifeLines representation led to much faster response times, primarily for questions which involved interval comparisons and making intercategorical connections. A 'first impression' test showed that LifeLines can reduce some of the biases of the tabular record summary. A post-experimental memory test led to significantly (p< 0.004) higher recall for LifeLines. Finally, simple interaction techniques are proposed to compensate for the problems of the static LifeLines display's ability to deal with precise dates, attribute coding and overlaps.”
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Carr, David A., Plaisant, Catherine and Hasegawa, Hiroaki (1998): Designing a Real-Time Telepathology Workstation to Mitigate Communication Delays. In Interacting with Computers, 11 (1) pp. 33-52
“Dynamic telepathology uses a teleoperated microscope to allow pathologists to view samples at a remote location. However, time delays introduced by remote operation have made use of a commercial dynamic telepathology system difficult and frustrating. This paper describes the iterative redesign of the user interface. We redesigned the interface, conducted experiments to evaluate the improvements, and then redesigned the user interface based on the results. Our work shows that predictive displays and local maps improve user control of the microscope and increase user comfort with the system. It also indicates that some degree of automation is necessary to support the navigation process and increase the overall usefulness of the system. Therefore, we also make recommendations for further automation to support the telepathology process and increase the usefulness of the system. While performed on a specific device using a dedicated communications system, the same problems would be encountered in other environments. For example, Internet-based systems that enable remote control or require browsing of large images will need to compensate for time delays and can benefit from our experience with the telepathology application.”
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» 1997 «
Ellis, Jason B., Rose, Anne and Plaisant, Catherine (1997): Putting Visualization to Work: ProgramFinder for Youth Placement. In: Pemberton, Steven (ed.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 97 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference March 22-27, 1997, Atlanta, Georgia. pp. 502-509. Available online
“The Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (HCIL) and the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) have been working together to design the ProgramFinder, a tool for selecting programs for troubled youths ranging from drug rehabilitation centers to secure residential facilities. The seemingly straightforward journey of the ProgramFinder from an existing user interface technique to a product design required the development of five different prototypes which involved user interface design, prototype implementation, and selecting search attributes. While HCIL's effort focused primarily on design and implementation, DJJ's attribute selection process was the most time consuming and difficult task. We also found that a direct link to DJJ's workflow was needed in the prototypes to generate the necessary "buy-in." This paper analyzes the interaction between the efforts of HCIL and DJJ and the amount of "buy-in" by DJJ staff and management. Lessons learned are presented for designers.”
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Plaisant, Catherine, Marchionini, Gary, Bruns, Tom, Komlodi, Anita and Campbell, L. (1997): Bringing Treasures to the Surface: Iterative Design for the Library of Congress National Digital Library Program. In: Pemberton, Steven (ed.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 97 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference March 22-27, 1997, Atlanta, Georgia. pp. 518-525. Available online
“The Human-Computer Interaction Lab worked with a team for the Library of Congress (LC) to develop and test interface designs for LC's National Digital Library Program. Three iterations are described and illustrate the progression of the project toward a compact design that minimizes scrolling and jumping and anchors users in a screen space that tightly couples search and results. Issues and resolutions are discussed for each iteration and reflect the challenges of incomplete metadata, data visualization, and the rapidly changing web environment.”
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Kumar, Harsha P., Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (1997): Browsing Hierarchical Data with Multi-Level Dynamic Queries and Pruning. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 46 (1) pp. 103-124
“Users often must browse hierarchies with thousands of nodes in search of those that best match their information needs. The PDQ Tree-browser (Pruning with Dynamic Queries) visualization tool was specified, designed and developed for this purpose. This tool presents trees in two tightly-coupled views, one a detailed view and the other an overview. Users can use dynamic queries, a method for rapidly filtering data, to filter nodes at each level of the tree. The dynamic query panels are user-customizable. Sub-trees of unselected nodes are pruned out, leading to compact views of relevant nodes. Usability testing of the PDQ Tree-browser, done with eight subjects, helped assess strengths and identify possible improvements. The PDQ Tree-browser was used in Network Management (600 nodes) and UniversityFinder (1100 nodes) applications. A controlled experiment, with 24 subjects, showed that pruning significantly improved performance speed and subjective user satisfaction. Future research directions are suggested.”
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» 1996 «
Plaisant, Catherine, Milash, Brett, Rose, Anne, Widoff, Seth and Shneiderman, Ben (1996): LifeLines: Visualizing Personal Histories. In: Tauber, Michael J., Bellotti, Victoria, Jeffries, Robin, Mackinlay, Jock D. and Nielsen, Jakob (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 96 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 14-18, 1996, Vancouver, Canada. pp. 221-227. Available online
“LifeLines provide a general visualization environment for personal histories that can be applied to medical and court records, professional histories and other types of biographical data. A one screen overview shows multiple facets of the records. Aspects, for example medical conditions or legal cases, are displayed as individual time lines, while icons indicate discrete events, such as physician consultations or legal reviews. Line color and thickness illustrate relationships or significance, rescaling tools and filters allow users to focus on part of the information. LifeLines reduce the chances of missing information, facilitate spotting anomalies and trends, streamline access to details, while remaining tailorable and easily transferable between applications. The paper describes the use of LifeLines for youth records of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice and also for medical records. User's feedback was collected using a Visual Basic prototype for the youth record.”
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Hascoet-Zizi, Mountaz, Plaisant, Catherine, Ahlberg, Christopher, Chalmers, Matthew, Korfhage, Robert R. and Rao, Ramana (1996): Where is Information Visualization Technology Going?. In: Kurlander, David, Brown, Marc and Rao, Ramana (eds.) Proceedings of the 9th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology November 06 - 08, 1996, Seattle, Washington, United States. pp. 75-77. Available online
“Over the past few years a lot of different information visualization techniques have been proposed. Being a relatively new and large field, the spectrum of emerging techniques has not clearly been identified. Another major consequence of the youthfulness of the field is that very few evaluation have been conducted so far. The aim of the panel will be to address these two points. First, panelist will characterize the spectrum of information visualization technology depending on tasks, users or data. Panelists will further discuss future trends in visualization technology by determining which are the most important features or challenges that information visualization systems should address. Second, the discussion will focus on how these systems are to be evaluated: through controlled experiments, system evaluation, long-time studies, verbal protocols, theoretical evaluations, or else?”
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» 1995 «
Rose, Anne, Shneiderman, Ben and Plaisant, Catherine (1995): An Applied Ethnographic Method for Redesigning User Interfaces. In: Proceedings of DIS95: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques 1995. pp. 115-122.
“Methods for observing software users in the workplace will become increasingly important as the number of people using computers grows and developers improve existing systems. Successful redesigns rely, in part, on complete and accurate evaluations of the existing systems. Based on our evaluation experience, we have derived a set of practical guidelines to be used by designers in preparing for the evaluation, performing the field study, analyzing the data, and reporting the findings. By providing a general framework based on ethnographic research, we hope to reduce the likelihood of some common problems, such as overlooking important information and misinterpreting observations. Examples from our ongoing work with the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice are used to illustrate the proposed guidelines.”
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» 1994 «
Shneiderman, Ben and Plaisant, Catherine (1994): The Future of Graphic User Interfaces: Personal Role Managers. In: Cockton, Gilbert, Draper, Steven and Weir, George R. S. (eds.) Proceedings of the Ninth Conference of the British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Specialist Group - People and Computers IX August 23-26, 1994, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. pp. 3-8.
“Personal computer users typically manage hundreds of directories and thousands of files with hierarchically structured file managers, plus archaic cluttered-desktop window managers, and iconic representations of applications. These users must deal with the annoying overhead of window housekeeping and the greater burden of mapping their organizational roles onto the unnecessarily rigid hierarchy. An alternate approach is presented, Personal Role Manager (PRM), to structure the screen layout and the interface tools to better match the multiple roles that individuals have in an organization. Each role has a vision statement, schedule, hierarchy of tasks, set of people, and collection of documents.”
Copyrights may apply
» 1993 «
Plaisant, Catherine, Carr, David A. and Hasegawa, Hiroaki (1993): Exploring Remote Images: A Telepathology Workstation. In: Ashlund, Stacey, Mullet, Kevin, Henderson, Austin, Hollnagel, Erik and White, Ted (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 93 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 24-29, 1993, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. p. 518. Available online
“Telemedicine is the practice of medicine over communication links. The physician being consulted and the patient are in two different locations. A first telepathology system has been developed by Corabi Telemetrics. It allows a pathologist to render a diagnosis by examining tissue samples or body fluids under a remotely located microscope.”
Copyrights may apply
» 1992 «
Plaisant, Catherine and Wallace, Daniel (1992): Touchscreen Toggle Design. In: Bauersfeld, Penny, Bennett, John and Lynch, Gene (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 92 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference June 3-7, 1992, Monterey, California. pp. 667-668. Available online
Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (1992): Scheduling Home Control Devices: Design Issues and Usability Evaluation of Four Touchscreen Interfaces. In International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 36 (3) pp. 375-393
“This article describes four different user interfaces supporting scheduling two-state (ON/OFF) devices over time periods ranging from minutes to days. The touchscreen-based user interfaces including a digital 12-h clock, 24-h linear and 24-h dial prototypes are described and compared on a feature by feature basis. A formative usability test with 14 subjects, feedback from more than 30 reviewers, and the flexibility to add functions favour the 24-h linear version.”
Copyrights may apply
Plaisant, Catherine and Sears, Andrew (1992): Touchscreen Interfaces for Alphanumeric Data Entry. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 36th Annual Meeting 1992. pp. 293-297.
“Touchscreens have been demonstrated as useful for many applications. Although a traditional mechanical keyboard is the device of choice when entering alphanumeric data, it may not be optimal when only limited data must be entered, or when the keyboard layout, character set, or size may be changed. A series of experiments has demonstrated the usability of touchscreen keyboards. The first study indicated that users who type 58 wpm on a traditional keyboard can type 25 wpm using a touchscreen and that the traditional monitor position is suboptimal for touchscreen use. A second study reported on typing rates for keyboards of various sizes (from 6.8 to 24.6 cm wide). Novices typed approximately 10 wpm on the smallest and 20 wpm on the largest of the keyboards. Users experienced with touchscreen keyboards typed 21 wpm on the smallest and 32 wpm on the largest. We then report on a recent study done with more representative users and more difficult tasks. Thirteen cashiers were recruited for this study and were required to complete ten trials in which they typed names and addresses with punctuation. Results indicate that the users improved rapidly from 9.5 wpm on the first trial to 13.8 wpm on the last trial, reaching their fastest performance after only 25 minutes. Although custom interfaces will be preferred for special types of data (e.g. telephone numbers, times, dates, colors) there will always be situations when limited quantities of text must be entered. In these situations a touchscreen keyboard can be used.”
Copyrights may apply
» 1991 «
Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (1991): Scheduling ON-OFF Home Control Devices. In: Robertson, Scott P., Olson, Gary M. and Olson, Judith S. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 91 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 28 - June 5, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana. pp. 459-460. Available online
Shneiderman, Ben, Plaisant, Catherine, Botafogo, Rodrigo, Hopkins, Don and Weiland, William (1991): Designing to Facilitate Browsing: A Look Back at the Hyperties Workstation Browser. In Hypermedia, 3 (2) pp. 101-117
“Since browsing hypertext can present a formidable cognitive challenge, user interface design plays a major role in determining acceptability. In the Unix workstation version of Hyperties, a research-oriented prototype, we focussed on design features that facilitate browsing. We first give a general overview of Hyperties and its markup language. Customizable documents can be generated by the conditional text feature that enables dynamic and selective display of text and graphics. In addition we present: -- an innovative solution to link identification: pop-out graphical buttons of arbitrary shape. -- application of pie menus to permit low cognitive load actions that reduce the distraction of common actions, such as page turning or window selection. -- multiple window selection strategies that reduce clutter and housekeeping effort. We preferred piles-of-tiles, in which standard-sized windows were arranged in a consistent pattern on the display and actions could be done rapidly, allowing users to concentrate on the contents.”
Copyrights may apply
Keil-Slawik, R., Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (1991): Remote Direct Manipulation: A Case Study of a Telemedicine Workstation. In: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 1991. pp. 1006-1011.
“This paper describes our experience with the design of a remote pathologist's workstation. We illustrate how our effort to apply direct manipulation principles led us to explore remote direct manipulation designs. The use of computer and communication systems to operate devices remotely introduces new challenges for users and designers. In addition to the usual concerns, the activation delays, reduced feedback, and increased potential for breakdowns mean that designers must be especially careful and creative. The user interface design is closely linked to the total system design.”
Copyrights may apply
» 1990 «
Faloutsos, Christos, Lee, Raymond, Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (1990): Incorporating String Research in a Hypertext System: User Interface and Signature File Design Issues. In Hypermedia, 2 (3) pp. 183-200
“Hypertext systems provide an appealing mechanism for informally browsing databases by traversing selectable links. However, in many fact finding situations string search is an effective complement to browsing. This paper describes the application of the signature file method to achieve rapid and convenient string search in small personal computer hypertext environments. The method has been implemented in a prototype, as well as in a commercial product. Performance data for search times and storage space are presented from a commercial hypertext database. User interface issues are then discussed. Experience with the string search interface indicates that it was used successfully by novice users.”
Copyrights may apply
» 1989 «
Furuta, Richard, Plaisant, Catherine and Shneiderman, Ben (1989): A Spectrum of Automatic Hypertext Constructions. In Hypermedia, 1 (2) pp. 179-195
“We describe our experiences with four separate conversions from paper documents into hypertext and discuss the lessons we have learned. The paper document's organisation affects the ease with which it can be converted and the appropriateness of the resulting hypertext. The form of the paper document's machine-readable 'markup' description affects the ability to transform the structure automatically. Designing the link structures that tie together the parts of the hypertext takes special care in automating, as badly-designed and incorrectly-formed links destroy the integrity of the hypertext. Overall, each of the conversions followed the same basic methodology, providing the handle for the development of 'power tools' that can be applied to simplify subsequent conversions.”
Copyrights may apply
Shneiderman, Ben, Brethauer, Dorothy, Plaisant, Catherine and Potter, Richard (1989): Evaluating three museum installations of a hypertext system. In JASIST - Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 40 (3) pp. 172-182
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Mar 21st, 2010
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