Design and evaluation of the alignment stick

Object alignment is one of the basic operations in drawing programs. Current solutions provide mainly three ways for carrying out this operation: either by issuing an alignment command, or by using direct positioning with the help of gravity active points, or by making use of constraints. The first technique has limited functionality, and the other two may be mysterious for a novice. We describe here a new direct manipulation tool for alignment. We show that while direct manipulation helps to make the tool intuitive, it has through iterative design evolved into a tool that also offers functionality not found in current commercial products. We also report on an experiment in which we compared the ease of use, intuitiveness, learnability, and efficiency of alignment menus, palettes and the alignment stick. Finally, we discuss our experiences in the two-handed control of the alignment stick and report on other interesting findings in our experiment.