Wizard of Oz for Participatory Design: Inventing an Interface for 3D Selection of Neural Pathway Estimates


 

David Akers

Stanford University

  Published as a CHI 2006 Work in Progress

 

Paper

PDF (3 MB)

 

Abstract

 

This paper describes a participatory design process employed to invent an interface for 3D selection of neural pathways estimated from MRI imaging of human brains. Existing pathway selection interfaces are frustratingly difficult to use, since they require the 3D placement of regions-of-interest within the brain data using only a mouse and keyboard. The proposed system addresses these usability problems by providing an interface that is potentially more intuitive and powerful: converting 2D mouse gestures into 3D path selections. The contributions of this work are twofold: 1) we introduce a participatory design process in which users invent and test their own gestural selection interfaces using a Wizard of Oz prototype, and 2) this process has helped to yield the design of an interface for 3D pathway selection, a problem that is known to be difficult. Aspects of both the design process and the interface may generalize to other interface design problems.

 

 

 Gestures invented through participatory design

Figure 4: Three gestures invented by users during participatory design: Left: shape matching (selects paths that look like the gesture curve). This gesture was most useful when the paths of interest were known, but obscured from view. Center: touch (selects any paths that touch the gesture). This was most often used when the goal pathways were visible. Right: surface-intersection (selects paths that intersect the specified region on a cutting plane). Unanticipated by the author, this gesture allowed the neuroscientist to ensure that selected pathways pass through specific anatomical landmarks visible in the cutting plane data.
David Akers | Last updated 17 Feb 2006