As a community, human-computer information and interface designers have tended to avoid use of fisheyes, and multi-scale presentations with their attendant distortion because of concern about how this distortion may lead to confusion and misinterpretation. On the other hand, for centuries, hand-created information presentations have made regular use of distortion to provide emphasis and actually enhance readability. Is the lack of use in computer presentations because thus far in our computational uses of distortion we have failed to provide adequate support that allows people to comprehend the manner in which the information is being presented? We describe a study about relative difficulty in reading distortions that investigates the effect of the use viewing cues such as the cartographic grid and shading on people's ability to interpret distortions. We look at two interpretation issues: whether people can locate the region of magnification and whether people can read the relative degree of magnification of these regions. We present the findings of this study and a discussion of its results.

Single Display Groupware (SDG) supports face-to-face collaborators working over a single shared display, where all people have their own input device. Although SDG is simple in concept, there are surprisingly many problems in how interactions within SDG are managed. One problem is the potential for interference, where one person can raise an interface component (such as a menu or dialog box) in a way that hinders what another person is doing i.e., by obscuring another person's working area that happens to be underneath the raised component. We propose transparent interface components as one possible solution to interference: while one person can raise and interact with the component, others can see through it and can continue to work underneath it. To test this concept, we first implemented a simple SDG game using both opaque and transparent SDG menus. Through a controlled experiment, we then analysed how interference affects peoples' performance across an opaque and transparent menu condition: a solo condition (where a person played alone) acts as our control. Our results show that the transparent menu did lessen the effect of interference, and that SDG players overwhelmingly preferred it to opaque menus.

No abstract

Our research concerns the design of interface components tailored for single display groupware (SDG) where multiple co-located people, each with their own input device, interact over a single shared display. In particular, we are concerned with 'interference' effects, where one person's raising of an interface component (e.g., a menu) can impede another's view and interaction on the shared screen. Our solution uses translucent interface components, where others can see through the obstructing component and continue their work underneath it. Our in-progress evaluation suggests this design lessens interference effects.

RESUMO O referido estudo tem por objetivo analisar o processo de implementação da Política de Humanização na Maternidade Escola Assis Chateaubriand (MEAC), através do Plano de Qualificação das Maternidades e Redes Perinatais do Nordeste e Amazônia Legal (PQMRP). A pesquisa pautou-se em estudo de natureza qualitativa do tipo descritiva. Os sujeitos da pesquisa perfizeram um universo de oito profissionais. Como principal resultado, visualizou-se que a Política de Humanização obteve êxito no contexto de mudanças institucionais previstas através do PQMRP.