Tweeq: Parameter-Tuning GUI Widgets by/for Creative Professionals

Professionals in the creative industry rely on digital content authoring tools that provide graphical user interface (GUI) widgets for tuning primitive values, such as numeric sliders, rotary knobs, and color pickers. Despite their prevalence, GUI studies have sometimes been considered “done” in the context of HCI, and users’ frustrations with these widgets might have gone unheard. We sampled such widgets from popular production software and analyzed their interaction design, identifying three core design principles: support diverse input modalities to match users’ nuanced control strategies, prioritize high-speed and accurate interaction for skilled users, and minimize visual footprint to preserve the creative workspace. We then provide reference implementations of GUI widgets that follow these guidelines, named Tweeq. Developed in parallel with the first author’s animation projects, these widgets allow parameter tuning with fewer clicks, provide continuous visual feedback through overlays, and facilitate gestural and keyboard inputs that do not require constant visual attention. To evaluate Tweeq, we implemented example applications and conducted an informal expert user study, which revealed generally positive reactions and indicated that the proposed design principles may offer a useful direction for GUI development in creative software.