VisualID SigGraph2004 paper

[Holger Waechtler]

Roger Larsson wrote:
 > On Friday 09 July 2004 23.25, Holger Waechtler wrote:
 > > Hi all,
 > >
 > > while browsing the SigGraph2004 paper list I encountered a paper that
 > > analyzes the typical navigation behaviour and weaknesses of 'average'
 > > people on common 2D desktop and icon sceneries and proposing an
 > > interesting and plausible scheme to improve visual memory of users's
 > > file icon representation including some pretty interesting user 
studies:
 > > http://www.idiom.com/~zilla/Work/visualids.pdf
 >
 > Yes, I think they onto something here.
 >
 > Anyway our desktop is much better than the example of current desktop
 > they show :-)

:) - sure, they called it "caricature" -


 > Using "Huge" icon size together with "folder icons reflects content"
 > gives a nice visual aid for many files.

yes, but for backup copies and derived projects with very similiar 
content the "similiar content versus similiar filename" issue from the 
paper discussion arises again. Maybe a combined icon made from 
thumbnail, visualID and the folder logo would be best.


 > We do not reformat page unnecessary (I dislike WinXP that not only
 > reformats the page when deleting a file, but also moves to a different
 > location... Konquerors approach to wait a while before reformatting is
 > MUCH better)
 >
 > But I have still felt the need to manually assign icons to some often
 > used folders. And the visual difference of source code is... none...
 >
 > >
 > > Maybe it's an interesting approach that might get incorporated into
 > > konqueror/kfm/nautilus/thegnomefilemanager, maybe some of you are
 > > interested in their research results,
 > > have a good weekend,
 >
 > Generating icons from filename only and not contens is an interesting
 > approach! (I think I would like it)

Given the code snippets in the paper it seems not too hard to implement 
(maybe to enable it as a user-configurable display option for those of 
us who don't want to spend all their memory on icon navigantion - ;).

Since thumbnail previews are still useful for a wide range of file types 
the best icon display style might be a combination of the classic 
mime-type icon (or "brand logo" like they call it in the paper in the 
example picture on page 6), the content thumbnail and the visualID 
generated from the file name.

Maybe the content thumbnail size inside the icon might get increased on 
mouse-over in a smooth animation and scaled to full kfm window size on 
shift (or any other hotkey) key press...

Holger