An empirical evaluation of undo mechanisms

Cass, Aaron G.; Fernandes, Chris S. T.; Polidore, Andrew

doi:10.1145/1182475.1182478

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Consequently, their models often allow only one outcome to a user command even when other reasonable responses could be considered. Indeed, studies showed that the users' expectations to non-trivial modifications on history are not always fully consensual [7] and can depend on the platform [16,17]. We illustrate this with two examples.…”

Section: Limited Vocabularymentioning

confidence: 92%

Causality

Nancel

Cockburn

2014

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Simple history systems such as Undo and Redo permit retrieval of earlier or later interaction states, but advanced systems allow powerful capabilities to reuse or reapply combinations of commands, states, or data across interaction contexts. Whether simple or powerful, designing interaction history mechanisms is challenging. We begin by reviewing existing history systems and models, observing a lack of tools to assist designers and researchers in specifying, contemplating, combining, and communicating the behaviour of history systems. To resolve this problem, we present CAUSALITY, a conceptual model of interaction history that clarifies the possibilities for temporal interactions. The model includes components for the work artifact (such as the text and formatting of a Word document), the system context (such as the settings and parameters of the user interface), the linear timeline (the commands executed in real time), and the branching chronology (a structure of executed commands and their impact on the artifact and/or context, which may be navigable by the user). We then describe and exemplify how this model can be used to encapsulate existing user interfaces and reveal limitations in their behaviour, and we also show in a conceptual evaluation how the model stimulates the design of new and innovative opportunities for interacting in time.

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Section: Limited Vocabularymentioning

confidence: 92%

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Nancel

Cockburn

2014

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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“…Whereas early systems using simple dependency models [3,19], later work focused on formal, sound and complete modeling of dependencies, and even automatically cascading the selective undo when necessary for consistency [6]. User studies showed that people could predict and understand what these selective undo systems will do [7]. Whereas in one sense, painting systems do not have such dependencies since all actions operate on pixels, we do study the issue of conflicts when the boundaries of actions overlap, as discussed below.…”

Section: Selective Undomentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective Undo Support for Painting Applications

Myers

Lai

Lê

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Today's widely deployed painting applications use a linear undo model that allows users to backtrack previous operations in reverse chronological order. This undo model is not useful if the user has performed desired operations after undesired ones. Selective undo, in contrast, allows users to select specific operations in the past and only undo those, while keeping the remaining operations intact. Although selective undo has been widely explored in the context of text editing and object-oriented drawing, we explore selective undo for painting (bitmap) editing, which has received less attention and introduces many interesting user interface design challenges. Our system, called Aquamarine, explores the script model for selective undo, where selectively undone operations are skipped in the history, rather than the more explored inverse model, which puts an inverse of the selected operations at the end of the history. We discuss the design implications and show through two informal user studies that selective undo is usable and desirable.

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“…The original mechanism [Prakash and Knister 1994] basically removed the command to undo from the history, and then redid the commands that were coming after it in the history. However, this interpretation of the history of commands as a script may not always match users' mental model of the undo command [Cass et al 2006]. With direct selective undo [Berlage 1994], application developers can implement an undo behavior that is more appropriate in this context, by adding an inverse command at the end of the history.…”

Section: Undo Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reciprocal Drag-and-Drop

Appert

Chapuis

Pietriga

et al. 2015

ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact.

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Drag-and-drop has become ubiquitous, both on desktop computers and touch-sensitive surfaces. It is used to move and edit the geometry of elements in graphics editors, to adjust parameters using controllers such as sliders, or to manage views (e.g., moving and resizing windows, panning maps). Reverting changes made via a drag-and-drop usually entails performing the reciprocal drag-and-drop action. This can be costly as users have to remember the previous position of the object and put it back precisely. We introduce the DND −1 model that handles all past locations of graphical objects. We redesign the Dwell-and-Spring widget to interact with this history, and explain how applications can implement DND −1 to enable users to perform reciprocal drag-and-drop to any past location for both individual objects and groups of objects. We report on two user studies, whose results show that users understand DND −1 , and that Dwell-and-Spring enables them to interact with this model effectively.

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An empirical evaluation of undo mechanisms

Cited by 11 publications

References 10 publications

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Selective Undo Support for Painting Applications

Reciprocal Drag-and-Drop

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