Boomerang: Suspendable Drag-and-Drop Interactions Based on a Throw-and-Catch Metaphor (presented at UIST 2007)

1. Boomerang: Suspendable Drag-and-Drop Interactions Based on a Throw-and-Catch Metaphor Masatomo Kobayashi Takeo Igarashi (The University of Tokyo)

2. Outline Background & Motivation Our Approach Early Feedback Conclusion & Future Work

3. Background Drag & drop is versatile and easy to use. Move Copy Create a shortcut Open (Application specific operations)

4. Problems while dragging Demo

6. Problems while dragging  Difficult or impossible while dragging. Switching the active window Scrolling a window Opening a deep folder Switching the active view

7. Previous work Window-switching Window-scrolling Hovering-based interactions are less efficient than clicking-based ones. hovering hovering

8. Previous work Using heuristics/prediction Window-switching Fold & Drop [Dragicevic 2004] Drag & Guess [Nishida & Igarashi 2007] Drag & Pop [Baudisch et al. 2003] Many other operations are still difficult or impossible. Rock & Roll [Chapuis & Roussel 2007]

9. How can we make it possible to perform various operations before dropping, without designing and learning alternative interactions for each operation?

10. Outline Background & Motivation Our Approach Early Feedback Conclusion & Future Work

11. Suspending a dragging operation Catch Throw Suspend dragging Resume dragging Any operation

12. Suspending a dragging operation Demo

17. How to throw an item & catch it Release the mouse button while dragging Throw Catch Spinning Mark Move the cursor near the mark and press the mouse button

18. How to throw an item & catch it Release v > v 1 v < v 2 S 1 S 0 Tracking Dragging S 2 S 3 Tracking Dragging Release Press Drop Throw Press Catch

19. How to manage a group Make a group Drop item(s) onto thrown item(s) Drag the group Drag the center of the group Separate an item Drag the item directly

20. How to copy/delete item(s) Copy Throw item(s) upward Delete Throw item(s) downward

21. How to copy/delete item(s) Copy Delete (Nothing) (Nothing) (Nothing) (Nothing) (Nothing) (Nothing)

22. Outline Background & Motivation Our Approach Early Feedback Conclusion & Future Work

24. Early Feedback  Will be useful Feature Feedback Throw-and-catch Grouping Copying, deleting  Exciting  Maybe difficult for novices  Will be useful  Easy to use  Difficult to use  Likely causes errors

25. Early Feedback Boomerang will be useful. The throw-and-catch interaction is exiting…! Grouping is easy to use.   

26. Early Feedback The throwing gesture is difficult for novices, isn’t it? 

27. Early Feedback The copying/deleting feature likely interferes normal throwing gestures…!  I just wanted to throw, but the item was copied.

28. Early Feedback A mark makes it impossible to interact with the item under the mark.  I cannot click this folder.

29. Outline Background & Motivation Our Approach Early Feedback Conclusion & Future Work

30. Conclusion The throw-and-catch interaction makes dragging operations suspendable. Catch Throw Any operation Boomerang supports grouping, copying, & deleting. Grouping Copying Deleting

31. Conclusion Temporary Glass Pane Gesture

32. Conclusion A simple gesture can enhance a common WIMP interface, preserving existing functionalities.

36. Future Work Perform experiments to assess the advantages and disadvantages of the boomerang technique. Window-switching Window-scrolling ? Can it improve the performance? ? How does the user fail to throw and catch?

37. Thank you.