Design of a Graphical History Browser with Undo Facility, and Visual Search Analysis

摘要

Existing interactive systems provide the user with various tools to make the system recover from an error. Most direct-manipulation graphical interfaces, for example, include an Undo/Redo tool, by which the user can cancel an erroneous action. However, they are only simple mechanisms or provide only a command history represented by a text list, from which it is difficult to find the command or state desired by the user. The purpose of this paper is to realize an interface which helps the user to utilize Undo selectively and easily, to discuss the design and implementation of a graphical history browser, and to describe a visual search experiment and analysis utilizing the history browser. The history browser includes the following functions. (1) Operation commands for each figure object are grouped. (2) The graphical history composed of snapshots of the operation screen is provided as a flip comic. In order to examine the effectiveness of command grouping, an experimental comparison is made with the conventional techniques without grouping. As a result, the effectiveness of command grouping for the experimental task is shown from the viewpoints of task execution time and subjective evaluation by the subject. In addition, in order to investigate the features of the history browser and the behavior of the user in history search, a task experiment is performed in which two methods of history display - display of the history browser and parallel displays of two figures - are used to search visually for the difference between the two figures. The task execution time, the error, and the eye-movement data of the subject are analyzed, and it is shown that by utilizing the flip function of the history browser, the user can find differences quickly and exactly from the specified stimulus display.