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GroupBar: The TaskBar Evolved

GroupBar: The TaskBar Evolved. Greg Smith, Patrick Baudisch, George Robertson, Mary Czerwinski, Brian Meyers, Daniel Robbins, and Donna Andrews Microsoft Research. Key Problem: Task Switching. Bannon et al. (1983) – information workers often switch between concurrent tasks

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GroupBar: The TaskBar Evolved

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  1. GroupBar: The TaskBar Evolved Greg Smith, Patrick Baudisch, George Robertson, Mary Czerwinski, Brian Meyers, Daniel Robbins, and Donna Andrews Microsoft Research

  2. Key Problem: Task Switching • Bannon et al. (1983) – information workers often switch between concurrent tasks • Rooms (Card & Henderson, 1987) • Working sets of windows • Large displays & multimon lead to more open windows (4 > 12 > 16) • Interruptions lead to more task switching

  3. Windows TaskBar Problems • TaskBar does not support task switching • Many operations required to make a switch • TaskBar does not scale well • Grouping by application rather than task • Hypothesis: • Movement, switching, & layout primitives at multi-window level can save time and effort

  4. Related Work Rooms Overview (1987) • Virtual Desktop Managers • Smalltalk Project Views • Rooms • X-Windows • BeOS workspaces • Linux – KDE desktops, etc. • Win32 ISV products: XDesk, GoScreen, Flash Desktops, DesksAtWill, etc. • (not yet built into Windows)

  5. Related Work Zooming (Pad++) 3D (Task Gallery) Tiled (Elastic Windows) Time-Machine Computing

  6. GroupBar Design Points • Familiar – build on Windows TaskBar • Non-modal – not separate desktops • Lightweight UI – low-effort group creation and management • Leverage spatial memory: allow users to place tiles and groups for quicker recall

  7. Demo

  8. GroupBar Basics • Bar on any desktop edge • Resizable, auto-hide, always-on-top options • Multiple bars • One tile for each window

  9. Arranging Tiles • Drag tiles within bar to reorder • Drag tiles between bars for greater spatial separation

  10. Grouping Tiles (Main Theme) • Drag tile onto another tile to create group • Drag tile in/out to add/remove from group • Drag one of the last two tiles out to destroy group

  11. Dragging Subtleties • Move caret is straight • Insertion caret is curved toward group target • Target position decoupled from caret symbol to aid in target acquisition

  12. Group Appearance • Groups indicated by • Subtle tile shape change • Colored background frame • Green group button

  13. Group Operations • Group button now offers a control surface • Click once to restore all • Click once to minimize all • Right-click for additional group operations

  14. Additional Group Operations Window Menu • Analogous to Window operations • Layout templates • Depend on display configuration • Might depend on actual windows (not implemented) Group Menu

  15. Overflow Strategies • TaskBar • Collapse by app • Multiple rows of tiles, buttons to ‘page’ • GroupBar • Collapse by group • Multiple bars Windows: paging buttons GroupBar: collapsed group

  16. Longitudinal User Study • 5 participants • 7-10 day study on their own work • Goal: initial understanding if users will use grouping for real work

  17. Results • Users did use grouping • Average 2.5 groups of 2 windows • Satisfaction ratings generally favorable • Useful to drag to group • Useful to close all windows in group at once • Useful to remember layout • Makes multiple monitors more useful

  18. Results (cont.) • Negative satisfaction ratings for: • More than one GroupBar at a time • Non-group windows minimize on group switch • 2 of 5 participants continued using GroupBar after study

  19. Comparative User Study • Comparing TaskBar and GroupBar • 18 participants • 3 tasks consisting of 2-3 documents each • Planned interruptions forced 5 task switches • Triple monitor setup (3840 x 1024)

  20. Results • Borderline significanttask time advantage • 11.7 min vs 13.25 min • Satisfaction ratings significantly favor GB • GB unanimously preferred

  21. Future Work • Iterative design improvements • Further studies for different display configurations and user tasks • Layout templates based on window use • Automatic grouping based on window use • Persistence

  22. Conclusions: Met Design Goals • GroupBar provides basic task management • Easy to group windows with drag and drop • Single click task switching • Tasks shown with subtle extension to familiar Windows TaskBar • Demonstrated ease of use, learnability, and user acceptance

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