Multiple Windows Strategies

Window Components

• Titles
• Borders or frames
• Scroll bars
• Buttons or icons

Windows Actions

• Open
• Open, place, and size
• Close
• Resizing
• Move
• Bring forward or activate

Challenges of Multiple Windows Design

• Multiple monitors
• Rapid display flipping
• Split screens
• Fixed size, space filling, tiled
• Variable size, space filling, tiled
• Variable size, non-space filling, tiled
• Piles of tiles
• Automatic panning
• Window zooming
• Arbitrary overlaps
• Cascades

Coordination of Multiple Windows Tasks

• Synchronized scrolling
• Hierarchical browsing
• Direct selection
• Two dimensional browsing
• Dependent windows opening
• Dependent windows closing
• Save or open windows state

Image Browsing in Tightly Coupled Windows

• Vertical and horizontal scroll bars only work for images 3 to 5 times screen size
• Zoom-in and Zoom-out techniques work better on larger images
• Keep overview on screen with enlarged subsection
• Zoom and replace (easy to implement, sometimes users find it disorienting)
• Fisheye view nice alternative to zoom and replace

Design of browsers should be governed by user's task

• Image generation
• Open-ended exploration
• Diagnosis
• Navigation
• Monitoring

Personal Role Management (PRM)

• Role-centered design - emphasizes user's tasks rather than documents
• Docucentric design - focus on user's document

PRM Requirements

• Support for unified framework
• Provide visual, spatial layout that matches task
• Support multiple information access for fast rearrangement of information
• Allow fast switching and resumption among roles
• Free user's cognitive resources to work on task-domain actions
• Use screen space efficiently and productively for tasks

PRM Task Objects

• Vision statement
• Set of people
• Task hierarchy
• Schedule