Interaction Design: Peter Davis

Design is not what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. -- Steve Jobs

This page outlines some of the projects which were heavily concerned with UI design, user experience and interaction design, and the exploration of new user models for performing tasks. Except where noted, I was the principal person responsible for UI/UX design in these efforts.

DECwrite and DECpresent

Goals

• Two applications, with separate UIs, built on the same basic composition and display functionality:
  
• DECwrite - Document creation/editing software, similar to Adobe FrameMaker. Technical lead and designer for graphics capabilities.
• DECpresent - Presentation creation/editing software, similar to MS PowerPoint, including slide sorting view, outline view, and slide show mode. Supervised and participated in UI design for DECpresent.
• Developed new interaction models for drawing circles, ellipses and arcs
• Worked with usability group on task-oriented testing and assessment.

New Graphics Editing Paradigm

Goals

• Prototype new transactional graphics editing paradigm combining features of existing object-oriented and bitmap-oriented models:
• Resolution-independent, object-oriented representation of all marks made.
• Painterly features such as airbrush, erasers and lasso-like cutting.
• Ability to revise any mark at any time after it was created.
  

Use of planar maps to support unique editing operations, such as cutting and erasing. Such operations were typically found only in raster (paint) programs. Planar maps enabled offering these features in geometric objects. As shown at left, any set of curves can create an area which can be filled, and the eraser can be applied to any lines or shapes, cutting them into new shapes. This software was used by Dutch expressionist Karel Appel to create a set of limited edition prints for the opening of a DEC business office in Utrecht.

Paws Project

Goals

• Design and prototype high-end multimedia authoring station for entertainment industry.
• Provide seamless integration of tools for 2D and 3D art, animation, music and video.
  

Distinguishing Features

	Extensive videotaped contextual inquiry with in-house illustrators, animator, sculptor/industrial designer at Paws. This revealed subtle features of traditional tools that were worth emulating, and idiosyncrasies that should not be emulated. For example, the airbrush is a spatial tool, allowing expressive movement in three dimensions. The distance of the brush from the surface partly controls the paint dispersion. In testing with an airbrush simulation tool, artists tended to prefer simply drawing with a pencil-like tool, and adjusting the dispersion separately with a knob or slider. This is also much more accessible to artists who lack airbrush expertise.
	Separation of tool from action, to allow any tool to be used with any action to create a mark. For graphics, the action defines the shape of the mark, and the tool defines the appearance of that shape. Tools include airbrush (with automatic masking), non-printing pencil, eraser. Actions include freehand drawing, geometric construction, and use of font outlines. Most software has not made this distinction. Photoshop, for example, only allow the airbrush to be used for freehand drawing. At left, the same action (text outlines) can be used with various tools to create different effects.
	Use of exposure sheet interface, familiar to animators, to arrange elements in time. This model allows tracks of audio, video, graphics and text to be sequenced relative to each other and to user-settable time units. This spreadsheet-like interface allows columns to represent tracks of information, while rows represent units of time.

Educational Software

	Orcas in Our Midst (Sunburst Communications, 1997) Director, Software Design Designed/implemented various activities for an educational CD-ROM for middle school classroom use, based on the study of a pod of Orcas in Puget Sound. Student Notebook - Allows students to cut/paste text and images from elsewhere in project, and to add their own notes. Population Modelling - Allows students to adjust birthrate and various environmental factors, and watch the effect on the population of a pod of Orcas. Echolocation Simulation - Allows students to set the initial position and velocity of orca and salmon, and observe the orca pursuing its prey.
	GenScope (Concord Consortium) Designed and illustrated splash screen for software that teaches genetics by allowing students to breed dragons with various traits, such as color, flying ability, etc.
	Developed library of PostScript procedures to produce different treatments from the same outline. This was used to generate multiple variants of different icons and buttons, all in a consistent style. Any new icon or button shapes could simply be plugged in to get renderings in various styles.

PostScript Editing Station

• Create high-end publishing software for preparing artwork for print production.
• UI had to be familiar to Quark and Adobe users, but able to provide advanced pre-press features.
  
• Allow opening files created with typical desktop applications (e.g., Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXpress, etc.) , to permit editing. This included making inferences based on known idioms of existing publishing tools to reconstruct editable model from printable page description

Storefront

Designed and added print options to product for creating commercial Web-to-print sites automatically. Print options allow sites to support creation of standard Job Definition Format (JDF) to control and monitor printing process. Also, designed mechanism for customizing print settings automatically for different vendors' presses, based on XML templates.