Computer Engineering Commons^™

Demonstrating Contradictions In A Graphical User Interface, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Designing a GUI is not so easy as it may appear to outside. The developer has to face many difficulties while improving the features of a GUI. In many cases improving one feature of a GUI results in worsening another feature of it, thus leading to a situation known as contradiction in TRIZ. Many such contradictions have been solved by different inventors in the past. We will demonstrate some important contradictions in this article and discuss alternative solutions for each contradiction.

Inventions On Auto-Configurable Gui-A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A GUI is intended for the end user but designed by the developer. Even the experienced developer cannot realistically anticipate what options will be required by the users at a future point of time. Besides, even a well-designed GUI may not be felt convenient to all categories of users as the skill, expertise and requirement of the users vary from each other.

Although the user can best describe his requirement and therefore can best configure the GUI, it is not advisable for the user to spend time and effort to configure the GUI. The user interface needs to be customized …

Inventions On User Configurable Gui- A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The graphic user interface is a revolutionary development over the prior art technique of the command line interface. Using GUI the user can do even complex operations through simple means like clicking buttons or dragging various graphic elements.

Ideally the GUI should contain all those buttons (or menu items or other GUI elements) and only those buttons (or menu items or other GUI elements) that the user needs. Besides the GUI elements should not obscure the display of data, should take no time for searching and should create no confusion in any level of user. Generally the GUI elements are …

The Revised 40 Principles For Software Inventions, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Applying 40 Principles is one of the earliest and most popular techniques of TRIZ. There are no controversies on application of 40 principles by any of the TRIZ schools. Although they are fundamentally sound, there is some difficulty in applying those in software related problems. As they were originally developed for mechanical or technical problems, the meaning of many terms like 'thermal', 'aerodynamic', 'hydrodynamic', 'ultrasonic', 'infrared', 'temperature', 'liquid', 'gas' etc. are embarrassing in a software context.

This article reviews the 40 principles in the context of software industry and rephrases the principles and their applications to make them suitable for …

Evolution Of User Interfaces For The Visually Impaired- Part 2, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Physically or mentally challenged people cannot use a computer in the same way a normal people can. For example, a person with disability in hands cannot use a standard keyboard or mouse efficiently. People having hearing problem, visual challenge etc. cannot interact with a computer like a normal person. So it is necessary to specially design the computers, interfacing devices and software interfaces, which can be used by the physically challenged people.

This article analyses the types of visual disabilities, different assistive technologies for different visual disabilities, guidelines for developing user interfaces for the visually impaired, software products available for …

Evolution Of User Interfaces For The Visually Impaired- Part- 1, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Physically or mentally challenged people cannot use a computer in the same way a normal people can. For example, a person with disability in hands cannot use a standard keyboard or mouse efficiently. People having hearing problem, visual challenge etc. cannot interact with a computer like a normal person. So it is necessary to specially design the computers, interfacing devices and software interfaces, which can be used by the physically challenged people.

There are many special devices like mouse, keyboard, pointers, and touch screens etc. to assist the visually challenged users. It is a challenge for the inventors and manufacturers …

Inventions On Menu Interfacing For Gui Applications, A Triz Based Analysis, Part-3, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

This article analyses 15 patents on Menu System from a TRIZ perspective to find out their IFRs and Contradictions. The previous two parts of this article analysed ten patents on the menu interfaces. This part analyses five more patents from TRIZ perspective and draws out the conclusion that the TRIZ process and methodology is perfectly applicable to software inventions.

Inventions On Menu Interfacing For Gui Applications, A Triz Based Analysis, Part-2, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The first part of the article analyzed five patents on menu interfaces. This part analyses five more patents from TRIZ perspective to find out their IFRs, Contradictions and which Inventive Principles have been applied to achieve those solutions.

Inventions On Menu Interfacing For Gui Applications, A Triz Based Analysis, Part-1, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

During last two decades, the computer menu system has been improved from a text based multiple choice to highly adaptive, self organized menu system. This has been possible by hundreds of inventions. This article analyses 15 patents on Menu System from a TRIZ perspective to find out their IFRs and Contradictions. Besides we will also see what Inventive Principles have been applied to achieve those solutions.

Inventions On Selecting Gui Elements, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Selecting an object or element is a fundamental operation in any graphic user interface. It is necessary to select an object before doing any operation (such as, dragging, copying, opening, deleting etc.) on that object. The GUI may provide features to select any single object or even multiple objects. The feature of selecting multiple objects can provides tremendous power to the GUI as the user can do complex operations on multiple objects in one go. However, the process of selection is not as simple as it appears to the user of a GUI. The internal logic of a selection mechanism …

Inventions On Displaying And Resizing Windows, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Windows are used quite frequently in a GUI environment. The greatest advantage of using windows is that each window creates a virtual screen space. Hence, although the physical screen space is limited to a few inches, use of windows can create unlimited screen space to display innumerable items. The use of windows facilitates the user to open and interact with multiple programs or documents simultaneously in different windows. Sometimes a single program may also open multiple windows to display various items. The user can resize the windows and move their location time to time as desired. However, there are several …

Inventions On Drag And Drop In Gui, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Drag and drop operation is one of the key capabilities of any Graphical User Interface. The user can do quite complex operations simply by visually dragging and dropping objects from one location to another. It saves user from remembering and typing a lot of commands. The result of a drag and drop operation may vary depending the type of source object and type of destination object. For example dragging a file and dropping on a folder may copy or move the file to the destination folder, dropping that file to a remote ftp location may upload that file using internet, …

Inventions On Color Selections In Graphical User Interfaces, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Color is an important aspect of any graphical user interface. Color is used to make a GUI attractive and meaningful. But, there are difficulties in using colors too. Improper use of color can give adverse effects. Wrong colors at wrong place make the GUI look clumsy and confusing. Besides the aesthetics issues there are many other issues involved with colors. One of the contradictions relating to usage of color is “The color of the GUI should be customizable to suit user preference. But at the same time it should not be customizable, as that will cause annoyance and confusion to …

Inventions On Gui Aesthetics, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Aesthetics or “look and feel” is one of the most important features of any graphical user interface. Better aesthetics makes the interface user-friendlier and more popular. Better aesthetics helps the user to understand the meaning of various components and memorize the navigation paths. A better look and feel ultimately makes a GUI more efficient and effective. Various methods are adopted to improve the aesthetics of a GUI, such as, by using colors, using 3D graphics, using pictorial icons, using sound etc.

It is important to provide links to all the features on the desktop or a quick access panel. But …

Inventions On Using Sound And Speech In Gui, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Voice recognition facilitates a human interaction with the machine. VR may be used to replace the manual task of pushing buttons on a wireless telephone keypad. This is particularly useful when the hands of the user are busy with other activities like driving a car.

However, the VRS system has several limitations. The VRS requires lot of training and customization in order to be effectively used by individual users as each individual falls into different voice patterns. Besides the voice interface is complex and is not as reliable as the keyboard or mouse. This article illustrates some interesting inventions on …

Inventions On Presenting Textual Items In Graphical User Interface, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although a GUI largely replaces textual descriptions by graphical icons, the textual items are not completely removed. The textual items are inevitably used in window titles, message boxes, help items, menu items and popup items. Textual items are necessary for communicating messages that are beyond the limitation of graphical messages. However, it is necessary to harness the textual items on the graphical interface in such a way that they complement each other to produce the best effect. One has to keep various considerations in mind while applying textual items in Graphical User Interface. This article illustrates a few inventions on …

Inventions On Gui For Touch Sensitive Screens, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A touch sensitive screen displays the information on the screen and also receives the input by sensing a user’s touch on the same screen. This mechanism facilitates system interaction directly through the screen without needing a mouse or keyboard. This method has the advantage to make the system compact by removing keyboard, mouse and similar interactive device. However there are certain difficulties to implement a touch screen interface. The display screens of portable devices are becoming smaller thereby leaving lesser space for display of data, menu or touch screen interaction. Besides some screens need to display so much of information …

Inventions On Gui For Eye Cursor Controls Systems, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Operating a GUI through eyeball is a complex mechanism and not used as often as mouse or trackball. But there are situations where eye-mouse devices can play a tremendous role especially where the hands of the user are not available or busy to perform other activities. The difficulties of implementing an eye-cursor control system are many. The article illustrates some inventions on eye-cursor control system, which attempt to eliminate the difficulties of the prior art mechanisms.

Inventions On Dialog Boxes Used In Gui, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The dialog boxes are useful in case of displaying warnings, errors, confirmations etc. in special situations. A typical dialog box is displayed in a small window with some text message along with a few options for the user to select. However, there are certain difficulties associated in programming and implementing a conventional dialog box, such as, severe programming effort, rigidity of the hard coded message, obscuring screen space and so on. There is a need to overcome these difficulties of the dialog box to make them more efficient and useful. The modality of the dialog boxes also creates some limitations. …

Inventions On Expressing Emotions In Graphical User Interface, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The conventional GUI is more mechanical and does not recognize or communicate emotions. The modern GUIs are trying to infer the likely emotional state and personality of the user and communicate through a corresponding emotional state. Emotions are expressed in graphical icons, sounds, pictures and other means. The emotions are found to be useful in especially in communication software, interactive learning systems, robotics and other adaptive environments. Various mechanisms have been developed to express emotions through graphical user interfaces. This article illustrates some interesting inventions selected from US patent database.

Inventions On Tree Navigators Used In Graphical User Interface, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A tree view or tree navigator is used to display hierarchical data organized in the form of a tree. In a tree structure there are parent and child nodes. The child nodes may further have descendants to n levels. There are many methods to make the navigation easy. Some of these are expanding and collapsing branches, splitting the tree, displaying a parent node in a separate tree, zooming branches, scrolling in various directions etc. It is still a difficult exercise to handle large trees efficiently. The effort still continues to manage large number of nodes with faster speed, greater control, …

10 Inventions On Scrolling And Scrollbars In Graphical User Interface, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Scrolling mechanism is used to display and edit large documents in a limited screen space or window. The scrolling mechanism may include a vertical scroll bar or a horizontal scroll bar or both to move the contents of the documents up and down or left and right. There may be navigation buttons on the screen representing the navigation keys on the keyboard. The user can click these buttons to scroll the screen. There may be very different methods of scrolling such as by using the “thumb”, as popularly used with a pdf document. Scrolling may be achieved through eyeball tracking …

10 Inventions On Command Buttons In A Graphical User Interface, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A command button may contain a textual label or a graphic image or both. It may be static or animated. There can be many different features to make a command button attractive and effective. As command button is a typical GUI element, most improvement on GUI in general will also be applicable to command buttons. Besides, there are also inventions to improve various aspects of command buttons in specific. This article illustrates 10 selected inventions from US patent database. Each invention is followed by a TRIZ based analysis in brief.