Operating diagram editors through unistroke gestures

Abstract

In software development processes, diagram editors play an important role. For instance, editors for creating UML diagrams are often used in early stages of software development. Three input methodologies can be distinguished: traditional mode-based editors, sketching editors, and gesture-based editors. Most of today's diagram editors are mode-based and use the mouse as an input device. (Multi-)touch inputs have not been integrated very well, yet, although a variety of touch input devices, such as (multi-)touch monitors and tablet computers, are quite common today. In this paper, we present an integration of an off-the-shelf unistroke recognizer into an existing diagram editor framework. This allows to reduce the number of different interaction modes in diagram editors as users perform editing tasks, such as creating, modifying, and deleting, by unistroke gestures. In order to examine the effect on the usability of such editors, we conducted a pilot study using a Statechart editor and present some preliminary findings here.