Pen Tablet UI/User Study/MO

Subject

MO

Male, 23

Graduate student

Warm-up

• managed to pretty quickly figure out the amount of pressure that was needed to draw

Task: Constrained drawing, Little Precision Required

• completed the task without any problems
• said that he was mostly looking at the tablet for precision, and only glancing up at the screen

Task: Unconstrained Drawing, Little Precision Required

Fixed Mode

• tried using the grab button with the stylus to move around. At first did not realize what was happening, and said that he wasn't sure what direction he should move the stylus in to achieve what he wanted, but it became clear pretty quickly

Movable Mode

• said that it made more sense to him, and liked the fact that he could see the entire drawing

Dynamic Mode

• ran into a problem a problem where scribbles were being made around the cursor, and the mapping rectangle kept moving up and up. This was something I had encountered a few times before, and assumed it to be a bug in the software. However, we eventually realized that it was being caused by not applying enough pressure. He was effectively drawing a dotted line, but because of the mapping mode, all the dots were appearing in the same place; and because he was moving across the tablet, the mapping rectangle was constantly being remapped in the opposite direction

Task: Constrained Drawing Requiring Precision

Dynamic Mode

• was able to complete the task easily

Alt-Hover Mode

• in this mode, he said his first inclination was to pick the stylus up when he released Alt, as if using Alt engaged dynamic mode temporarily.