VisualIDs: Scenery for Data Worlds

VisualIDs: Scenery for Data Worlds:

"...the same users who misplace files on a daily basis are not nearly as lost in the real world -- we do not need a map to find our way to the kitchen or locate our workplace each day. There are familiar places where people do get lost, however. Big parking lots are one example. The problem is obvious, though it has been largely overlooked in several decades of HCI research: scenery is what is missing. In current GUIs everything looks the same, and finding a particular file is as difficult as finding your car in a big parking garage.

In this project we show that suitable scenery (distinctive appearance) can be automatically invented using computer graphics techniques. VisualIDs are a form of automatically generated scenery applied to individual data items such as files. Our experiments show significantly improved speeds in a simulated file finding task after only a few minutes of use, and with no training. "

browser prototype screenshot

visualID varieties (1.5 meg image)