The outcome of these observations will be a taxonomy of windowing tasks and layout strategies. The mail-tool application was used mainly for the purpose of proof of concepts. In the Personal Role Manager, the role hierarchy of the user is mapped onto the nested hierarchical windows. This organization allows users to see an overview of their roles, focus on their roles at multiple levels, and restructure their role hierarchy with efficient multiple window operations. In the WWW browser, the hierarchical organization of pages on the screen allows the user to see the context, while exploring details lower in the hierarchy.
Users can open multiple links, compare, and restructure the layout as their goals change.
My disseration work is done in the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. However, the usability of current interfaces becomes critical in the wide-spread use of these technologies. We proposed a bimanual interaction metaphor that also seamlessly integrates with the standard GUI pointing and scrolling devices. A patent application for the interaction metaphor has been made based on this work. This work was done during my summer internship at IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, in collaboration with Dr. Shumin Zhai, Dr. Barton A. Smith, and Dr. Ted Selker.