TweakyTemplate - Reifying template tweaks for book design
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URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Perustieteiden korkeakoulu |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
2019-10-21
Department
Major/Subject
Human-Computer Interaction and Design
Mcode
SCI3020
Degree programme
Master's Programme in ICT Innovation
Language
en
Pages
67 + 12
Series
Abstract
Book designers have shifted from manual design to using software applications over the years, but the current desktop-publishing tools are generally cluttered and not particularly interactive. We are interested in the breakdowns faced by designers when using these tools and possible ways to make them more interactive. We conducted a qualitative interview study with 12 book designers where we inquired about their practices and breakdowns with the current tools. We identified three key problems: the unidirectionality of templates, the designer-editor bidirectionality and the regular reuse of elements across and within books. These discoveries led to the conclusion that designers mostly struggle with finding ways of capturing the various forms that similar elements take across books and reapplying them under a different format. This motivated our design choice of reifying template tweaks, which we define as transforming small refinements in the position of items (relative to the template) into first-class objects. These objects can be directly manipulated and reused on other elements, regardless of their nature. We implemented a system that allows the visualization of tweaks under the form of 2D objects. We conducted 5 pilot studies and a within-subjects experiment with 12 participants to evaluate our prototype. Overall, the participants were 22.5% more accurate with our system that supported the tweak functionality. Participants adapted to the usage of the tweaks and preferred them over the other system that did not include tweaks.Description
Supervisor
Oulasvirta, AnttiThesis advisor
Oulasvirta, AnttiKeywords
tweak, template, book design, interaction