Liquid Text (October 1, 2009 - September 30, 2010)
Keith Edwards
Georgia Tech PI: Keith Edwards
Students: Craig Tashman, Joe Zhou, Hrishikesh Pathak
Samsung Technical POC: Insik Myung
Project Goals
The goal of this project is to develop new interaction techniques to support active reading, a common aspect of knowledge work that involves reading, sensemaking, annotating, and interlinking textual content. Specifically, this project aims to develop new interface metaphors for interacting with documents and text on multitouch systems, create and evaluate an interaction vocabulary to support browsing, annotation, comparison, hyperlinking, organization, and other aspects of active reading, and provide a compelling and novel applications of multitouch technology that can support the needs of knowledge workers in advanced office environments.
Project Details
Figure 1: LiquidText running on a multitouch-enabled computer
Accomplishments
Our major accomplishments in this first project year are as follows:
- Conducted detailed requirements analysis for active reading support features
- Conducted and analyzed interviews and design workshops with knowledge workers
- Developed categorized compilation of necessary features and functions
- Developed initial prototype of LiquidText system, encompassing a wide array of interaction techniques and underlying text manipulation algorithms for active reading support on multitouch devices:
- Fluid text model
- Linking and annotation features
- Text compression and extraction
- Designed further enhancements for Version 2 of prototype system, based on use and evaluation of initial prototype (not yet implemented)
- Freeform annotation support, via virtual ink using a stylus (see Figure 2)
- Semantic Zooming: ability to manage large virtual workspaces via selective zooming control of documents and extractions
- Highlighting of text content
- Aggregation of text content
- Document linking, with link endpoints spatially anchored in text content
- Fisheye workspace, intended to support LiquidText on smaller surfaces, such as tablet-scale devices.
- Numerous nhancements to basic interactions, such as text selection and extraction (example, double tap-and-drag for excerpt creation, which have better usability properties).
- Creation of tools for altering color and other properties of annotations
- Conducted exploration of multiple form factors for LiquidText hardware, along with possible modifications to interaction techniques
- Tablet (Windows-based and iPad)
- Touch-screen desktop
- Conducted extensive design process for future iterations of LiquidText
- Brought in designers to analyze and brainstorm new interaction possibilities
- Large catalog of features intended for next version of the system; for example, aggregation of link annotations, better support for workspace organization on small tablets, support for gesture discoverability, and others.
Figure 2: Freeform virtual ink drawn on a document where the document is uncollapsed (left), and where part of the document is collapsed (right).
Goals for Project Year 2
We have a detailed project plan for Year 2 of this effort, which we expect will result in a greatly refined version of LiquidText, targeted for use on small (10”) tablet devices. Through the extensive evaluation, validation, and ideation process completed in Year 1, we have completed initial designs for the features enumerated above. In Year 2, we intend to implement these features and perform a final, summative evaluation of the software. We expect this project year to result in a large number of new interaction techniques as well as a solid, deployable version of the system. We hope to begin project Year 2 in January, 2011.
Research Artifacts
- [Tashman, 2010] Craig Tashman. LiquidText: Active Reading Through Multitouch Document Manipulation. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2010, Doctoral Consortium. April, 2010.
- [Tashman, 2011] Craig Tashman, W. Keith Edwards. LiquidText: A Flexible, Multitouch Active Reading Environment. Submitted to the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2011.