Content arrangement on large high-resolution displays: a PDF-reader

Abstract

The advent of Large High Resolution Displays (LHRDs) enables new visualisation methods for data analysis. This allows users to replace virtual navigation with spatial navigation which leads to further challenges in arranging the content appropriately. Conventional applications are developed without considering these novel issues; thus they may have deficiencies to be used on LHRDs efficiently. For this purpose, we conduct this thesis with a focus on the content arrangement of PDF documents. The aim of this thesis is to design, implement and evaluate an interface for viewing PDF documents on LHRDs. After an extensive literature review, we conducted design workshops to elicit design concepts and received various inspiring suggestions. The most promising design ideas were implemented as a working prototype by using an existing open source PDF renderer. Finally, we evaluated our implementation in a collaborative sensemaking user study in terms of usability and performance. We examine the result of the evaluation study and present key influencing factors which might be useful for future applications on LHRDs.