Pen Tablet UI/User Study/S

Subject

Name: S

Age: 23

Occupation: Student

Warm-up

• Mentioned the problem of using an indirect device, and not knowing *precisely* where the line would appear

Task: Constrained drawing, Little Precision Required

• "with the three things, it was very easy" (commenting on the fact that the task required drawing something in the center of each third of the tablet area)
• immediately figured out what the blue rectangle in the center meant

Unconstrained Drawing, Little Precision Required

Movable Mode

• expected touchpad to cause it to move
• but, when told that she needed to use the stylus, immediately figured out the way it worked
• complained that using the stylus felt really inefficient
• completed the drawing easily
• "the lines appeared where I thought they would, for sure"

Fixed Mode

• figured it out: "it's kind of the opposite of what I was doing before. It's pretty obvious once I started to move it."
• "I keep forgetting that I need to use the stylus to scroll"
• at one point, seemed to be moving the cursor towards the lower right corner as if to select that area
• commented that "in this way, when I'm drawing the bottom, I can't see the top of my picture. ... I guess if I was a kid, I'd probably want to see my whole picture. ... Perhaps you're drawing something in relation to something else."

Dynamic Mode

• completed with no problems
• "I like this way, it's a lot quicker. Also, when I was talking at the start about how I didn't know where the line would show up -- this kind of solves that problem."

Task: Unconstrained Drawing, Requiring Precision

Dynamic Mode

• was able to complete it successfully in this mode

Movable Mode, Alt-Hover

• "This seems like it's going to be more difficult than it was in the other way."
• When in hover mode, intially didn't press hard enough to see crosshairs
• thought that moving the crosshairs was like setting the cursor in dynamic mode -- didn't realize that once she had set the crosshairs, she had to keep the stylus in the same position on the tablet.
• after figuring it out, was able to complete the drawing successfully
• "I like the dynamic for doing that better. It sort of slows the creative process when you have to be moving the [mapping rectangle] around."

Additional Notes

• I added a test that required precision but didn't require moving the mapping rectangle

(drawing a barbell in the centre of the screen)

• Noted that with the dynamic mode, the instinct was still to draw in the appropriate area of the tablet
• Said that the hover mode felt fluid, since she didn't have to move the rectangle
• Suggested that being able to to move the rect between 3 "locked-in" areas using the arrow keys might be nice
• Interestingly, when drawing one of the circles in dynamic mode, she set the cursor as if she was going to start drawing the circle from the 3:00 position, but actually started drawing from 12:00 on the tablet, causing the circle to be placed in the wrong location
• Didn't understand what the blue rectangle meant in dynamic mode -- didn't felt like it was necessary or useful

- For her own drawing, thought dynamic mode was best: "If I had to move to finish part of the bottom of [the shape], it would have been kind of annoying. ... if one motion is in two of the sections, it would seem weird to be able to only do half of [the shape]"