Designer s Choice: Constructing a Study to Compare Display Interfaces for Early Design Sketching

Digital design tools provide several advantages over pen and paper, including a virtually unlimited workspace and easy design storage, transportation, duplication and access. However, the benefits of new tools are limited by the physical interfaces that are used to interact with them. In this paper, we describe and conduct an exploratory study designed to illuminate strengths and weaknesses of three digital sketching interfaces: Separated Overview+Detail (two standard desktop screens), Separated Focus+Context (one standard desktop screen with one large screen), and Single Large-Screen. The experimental tasks focus on the domain of early sketching and prototyping. Users performed one of three tasks on all three displays. Our results suggest that the Focus+Context system elicits higher user satisfaction, and possibly incurs fewer costs on perception resources and performance. Given the exploratory nature of this study, we close with suggestions for further research directions.