Paper Reading # 5 - Engineering Animations in User Interfaces

Intro:
     Title: Engineering Animations in User Interfaces
     Author Bios

1. Thomas Mirlacher
• http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=5780879&authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=AmP3&locale=en_US&srchid=246d69b0-1030-4ac5-9867-57f7984668b0-0&srchindex=1&srchtotal=2&goback=.fps_PBCK_*1_Thomas_Mirlacher_*1_*1_*1_*1_*2_*1_Y_*1_*1_*1_false_1_R_*1_*51_*1_*51_true_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2&pvs=ps&trk=pp_profile_name_link
• Research: Network architecture and analysis, DVB-[S,C] and multimedia networking, Embedded (Linux) Systems and System Level coding
2. Philippe Palanque
• http://www.irit.fr/~Philippe.Palanque/
• Research projects funded by the French Department of Defence
3. Regina Bernahaupt
• http://www.irit.fr/~Regina.Bernhaupt/
• She focuses on how to evaluate usability and user experience in various contexts especially for entertainment oriented products and services.

Summary:
Animation can be used in applications to decrease cognitive strain and increase the usability because they help the user understand how the application behaves and how the application changes, all in a natural way.
Even though it can be very useful, it isn't usually involved because of the complexity in specifications and implementations of the software. The researchers propose using a Petri net model-based approach to this problem
.
The designing of interactive animated systems has several steps: needs and requirements analysis, concept designing phase, low fidelity prototyping phase, high fidelity prototyping and formal modeling phase, and then the completed animated user interface along with usability evaluation. Please reference figure 1 in the paper for details (It would not copy and paste or save into here correctly.)

Figure 1.

This paper breaks down the  design and implementation of animation into two levels, the high-level view and the low-level view. The high-level view focuses on the features of the actual animated objects, such as composition and properties. The low-level view focuses on the temporal aspects, such as tweeming/interpolation and the hardware rendering. Figure 1 shows the steps for the high level view of animation, and figure 2 does the same for the low-level view. The calculate new Property Value involves finding where the next place to move the object and how to get there.

Figure 2

These models for how the design the animation provides the framework for breaking down the complexity, but it obviously needs to be refined before it will contain a complete description of the animation and can bridge the gap between the design and the implementation.

Figure 3. This shows the ICO model of Figure 1 (only one side). Click for a full view.

The Interactive Cooperative Objects formalism is a form of Petri nets that is, according to this paper, the most effective way of modeling the behavior of the animation. Using this to refine the steps described about can help bridge the gap between the design and the implementation.

They perform a case study with an interactive TV designed using this approach.

Figure 4. Shows the ICO model of figure 2 (please click to get a better view)

 

Related work not referenced in the paper:

1. Tango: a framework and system for algorithm animation

• http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=58216&tag=1
• This paper discusses a framework the researchers made for animating algorithms. Even thought it is for algorithms,  it still discusses how to approach animation development.

2. Observations from supplementing the traditional design process via Internet-based collaboration tools

• http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09511920150214938
• This paper doesn't talk about animation specifically but it does discuss the design process in general and also collaborative design, which animation has to do.

 3.Integration of multi-objective and interactive genetic algorithms and its application to animation design

• http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=823289
• This paper discusses improving Interactive GA, which is a method of solving decision-making problems and then tests their improvements through using it when creating animation

4. PETRI NET BASED DESIGN OF USER-DRIVEN INTERFACES USING THE INTERACTIVE COOPERATIVE OBJECTS FORMALISM.

• http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.54.5358&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• This paper  describes the ICO method in detail

5. Validating  interactive  system  design through  the  verification  of  formal  task and  system  models

• http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.54.4474&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• This paper discusses the problem of articulation between task modelling and system modelling in interactive software, and how ICO can help this

6. Synergistic modelling of tasks, users and systems using formal specification techniques

• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0953543897000131
• This paper clarifying the articulation between the task and system models faced in designing.

7. A Formal Description of Multimodal Interaction Techniques for Immersive Virtual Reality Applications

• http://www.springerlink.com/content/01xef6yqp0pjbtll/
• This paper discusses how ICO can be used in designing Virtual Reality applications

8.  Towards an integrated proposal for Interactive Systems design based on TLIM and ICO

• http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.50.9101&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• This paper discusses the similarities and differences between two formal methods, TLIM and ICO

9. Teaching about Dynamic Processes A Teachable Agents Approach

• http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1027974
• This paper discusses formal methods like ICO in real-time embedded multimodal systems

10. A Petri net based environment for the design of event-driven interfaces

• http://www.springerlink.com/content/y55l916384412783/
• This paper goes into detail in what the Petri net based environment is how it can be used.

I found several papers that talked about the different parts of the paper I read, including petri net, ICO, design processes, and even using ICO in animation. I do not feel that this was a novel paper. It may be put together slightly different than the others, but I do not see anything particularly new or exciting.

Evaluation:
The way the approach was tested was by performing a case study. They developed an interactive TV interface with animations using this method to see how effective it is. They never describe letting users try out the TV, which I think they should have. This process they developed is suppose to make incorporating animation easier, so users will be able to have that benefit in their systems. If the users didn't think it was developed and planned well, that might show some flaws in their method.

Discussion: 
Honestly, this paper is much more lower level than I thought it would be when I read the abstract and chose it. From the abstract (and the title), I assumed they would be discussing how the users work with the animations in the paper, which is why I chose it. From what I could tell from the article, their approach to development seems like a good one. I've never designed animation, so I can't fully evaluate it. I have designed software though, and I like taking a top-down approach of fleshing out the details from the general overview first developed. Therefore, this seems like a good approach to take.

Reference Information:
[1] Engineering Animations in User Interfaces: http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/2310000/2305504/p111-mirlacher.pdf?ip=128.194.132.227&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&CFID=151349081&CFTOKEN=89389542&__acm__=1346828991_40cfab7925cefed4ab2191e415eaa302
[2] All papers listed were found using http://scholar.google.com/