Just Draw It! Programming by Sketching Storyboards,

Abstract

Current interactive user interface construction tools make it hard for a user interface designer to illustrate the behavior of an interface. These tools focus on specifying widgets and making it easy to manipulate details such as colors, alignment, and fonts. They can show what the interface will look like, but make it hard to show what it will do, since they require programming or scripting in order to specify all but the most trivial interactions. For these reasons, most interface designers, especially those who have a background in graphic design, prefer to sketch early interface ideas on paper or on a whiteboard. We have developed an interactive tool called SILK that allows designers to quickly sketch an interface using an electronic pad and stylus. However, unlike a paper sketch, this electronic sketch is interactive. The designer can illustrate behaviors by sketching storyboards, which specify how the screen should change in response to end-user actions. This paper describes our storyboarding mechanism and provides design ideas for a production-level system.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 27, 1995
Accession Number
ADA303010

Entities

People

  • Brad A. Myers
  • James A. Landay

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Basic Programming Language
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Control Panels
  • Feedback
  • Graphical User Interface
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Human-Machine Interaction
  • Language
  • Lisp Programming Language
  • Programming Languages
  • Scripting Languages
  • Software Prototyping
  • Specifications
  • User Interface
  • User Interface Engineering

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Educational Psychology

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics