GroupBar: The TaskBar Evolved

Greg Smith, Patrick Baudisch, George Robertson, Mary Czerwinski, Brian Meyers, Daniel Robbins, and Donna Andrews

Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research 2 of 22 OZCHI 2003: New Directions in Interaction

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

Microsoft Research 3 of 22 OZCHI 2003: New Directions in Interaction

Windows TaskBar Problems

TaskBar does not support task switchingMany operations required to make a switch

TaskBar does not scale wellGrouping by application rather than task

Hypothesis:Movement, switching, & layout primitives at

multi-window level can save time and effort

Microsoft Research 4 of 22 OZCHI 2003: New Directions in Interaction

Related Work Virtual Desktop Managers

Smalltalk Project ViewsRoomsX-WindowsBeOS workspacesLinux – KDE desktops, etc.Win32 ISV products: XDesk, GoScreen, Flash

Desktops, DesksAtWill, etc.(not yet built into Windows)

Rooms Overview (1987)

Microsoft Research 5 of 22 OZCHI 2003: New Directions in Interaction

Related Work

3D (Task Gallery)Zooming (Pad++)

Time-Machine Computing Tiled (Elastic Windows)

Microsoft Research 6 of 22 OZCHI 2003: New Directions in Interaction

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

Microsoft Research 7 of 22 OZCHI 2003: New Directions in Interaction

Demo

Microsoft Research 8 of 22 OZCHI 2003: New Directions in Interaction

GroupBar Basics

Bar on any desktop edge Resizable, auto-hide,

always-on-top options Multiple bars One tile for each window

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Arranging Tiles

Drag tiles within bar to reorder

Drag tiles between bars for greater spatial separation

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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

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Dragging Subtleties Move caret is straight

Insertion caret is curved toward group target

Target position decoupled from caret symbol

to aid in target acquisitiontile center tile center

left caretinsert caret

right caret1 3/1 3/ 1 3/1 3/ 1 3/1 3/

carets

Microsoft Research 12 of 22 OZCHI 2003: New Directions in Interaction

Group Appearance

Groups indicated bySubtle tile shape change

Colored background frame

Green group button

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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

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Additional Group Operations

Analogous to Window operations

Layout templatesDepend on display

configurationMight depend on

actual windows (not implemented)

Window Menu

Group Menu

Microsoft Research 15 of 22 OZCHI 2003: New Directions in Interaction

TaskBarCollapse by appMultiple rows of tiles,

buttons to ‘page’

Overflow Strategies GroupBar

Collapse by groupMultiple bars

GroupBar: collapsed group

Windows: paging buttons

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Longitudinal User Study

5 participants

7-10 day study on their own work

Goal: initial understanding if users will use

grouping for real work

Microsoft Research 17 of 22 OZCHI 2003: New Directions in Interaction

Results

Users did use groupingAverage 2.5 groups of 2 windows

Satisfaction ratings generally favorableUseful to drag to groupUseful to close all windows in group at onceUseful to remember layoutMakes multiple monitors more useful

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Results (cont.)

Negative satisfaction ratings for:More than one GroupBar at a timeNon-group windows minimize on group switch

2 of 5 participants continued using GroupBar after study

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Comparative User Study

Comparing TaskBar and GroupBar

18 participants

3 tasks consisting of 2-3 documents eachPlanned interruptions forced 5 task switches

Triple monitor setup (3840 x 1024)

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Results Borderline significant

task time advantage11.7 min vs 13.25 min

Satisfaction ratings

significantly favor GB

GB unanimously preferred

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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

Microsoft Research 22 of 22 OZCHI 2003: New Directions in Interaction

Conclusions: Met Design Goals

GroupBar provides basic task managementEasy to group windows with drag and dropSingle click task switching

Tasks shown with subtle extension to familiar Windows TaskBar

Demonstrated ease of use, learnability, and user acceptance