Design Framework for Interactive Highlighting Techniques

Highlighting techniques are a diverse class of visual communication techniques that make users aware of salient information in a timely manner. Any visual effect can potentially be used and manipulated to create highlighting effects given the right context, making the design space for highlighting techniques broad and rich. Although highlighting techniques are a common and important part of user interfaces, there is a lack of understanding about how to select, apply, and control their effects for achieving the best results. To address this knowledge gap, we present a new structured design framework – Parametric Control and Construction of Highlights (PCCH) – for describing highlighting techniques in a concise and objective way, using parameters to accurately specify highlighting technique configurations. We then review the current understanding of highlighting techniques, their effects, and prior methods of measuring those effects. We also review underlying human factors that affect how users interact with highlighting techniques.