Pen Tablet UI/User Study/A

Subject

A

Female, 21

Student

Warm-up

• quickly figured out the tablet pressure required

Task: Constrained drawing, Little Precision Required

• immediately commented on the difficulty of continuing a line that was drawn earlier
• commented that the mapping rectangle on screen does not appear to be the exact same aspect ratio as the tablet
• said that she felt that she had to hold the pen in a different way than she would normally, because the height of the tablet is different from the height of the desk, so if your hand is resting on the desk, you can't hold the stylus the same way you would with a pencil.

Task: Unconstrained Drawing, Little Precision Required

Fixed Mode

• "Okay, now that looks weird. Why is the line coming up? Oooooh, it's the bottom of the page."
• suggested that maybe a drop shadow or something might be a better way to indicate that the page was moving
• wondered whether she could pan in more than just the vertical, but realized that she couldn't and said "Oh, that makes sense, because [the mapping rectangle] is already as wide as the page."

Movable Mode

• noticed a problem with my prototype (and sort of with the tablet) that it's almost impossible to draw right to the edge of the mapping rectangle
• tried to use her finger on the tablet (non-touchpad) area

• commented that she liked this method better, because she could always see the full paper

Dynamic Mode

• "My first thought is, if I want to draw a dotted line, then I have to reset the cursor every time."
• Also commented that the cursor blocks the line
• After drawing one line, and then trying to draw a second: "Oh, and then I totally forgot that I have to move the cursor."
• Ran into a problem where midway through a line, she let up the pressure on the stylus. Then she started drawing again, and the line started back where she left the cursor again.
• "The nice thing is that I can start right where I want to start."
• Noticed a problem with my prototype that the line doesn't always start exactly where you place the cursor
• Made a good observation that using this dynamic mode, she can set the cursor once and have an effective drawing area that exists in four quadrants around the cursor
• Thought that it was funny that only the center is capactive, when you can use the pen everywhere, and the surface is not any different in the center

Task: Constrained Drawing Requiring Precision

Dynamic Mode

• encountered the problem where she let up pressure a bit in the middle of a long line, and the second half of the line then appeared in the totally wrong place (back where the cursor was)
• Like S, set the cursor at the 3:00 position of the circle, yet started drawing the circle from the 5:00 position.

Alt-Hover Mode

• When releasing the Alt key, also picked up the stylus off the tablet: "I kind of feel that if I see the cross there, it's like the cursor idea, that that's where the line will begin."

• it's possible this was due to have learned dynamic mode first

Additional Notes

• noticed the problem that the the physical border of the tablet is beyond the actual sensors, so you would have the impression that you're still drawing on the tablet, but you're actually off the pressure-sensitive area.
• interesting: when she was trying to do precise drawing in movable mode (but before she learned of Alt-hover), she conquered the vertical precision problem by moving aligning the bottom of the mapping rect to the spot where she wanted to start drawing her line. So that made the Y precision easy.
• seemed to have quite a bit of trouble with control-display coordination on the X axis, but not so much on the Y axis