Image Forming Apparatus Job Display Scale Overlap
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Solution Overview
Problem
Image forming apparatuses face challenges in maintaining operability when the display scale is reduced, leading to overlapped job images that become invisible or unselectable due to minimum display unit constraints, particularly in touch panel operations where button sizes and positions are ambiguous during scale changes.
Innovation Solution
The image forming apparatus includes a control section that manages job setting information display on a schedule screen, allowing selection and reselection of overlapped job images, with zoom buttons to adjust the display scale, ensuring job images are displayed as overlapped if their sizes become smaller than a minimum unit, enabling selection through a reselection screen.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Area of stationary object
If the display scale is reduced to show more jobs on the screen, then the overview of job schedules is improved, but the job images become invisibly small and unselectable
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a time axis dimension to the display, arranging jobs chronologically along the time axis. This allows multiple jobs to be displayed in a linear sequence without overlapping, maintaining their individual visibility and selectability while utilizing the horizontal display space efficiently. The time axis provides a natural ordering that preserves job information distinguishability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the display area into discrete time intervals along the time axis, with each job occupying its own temporal segment. This segmentation prevents jobs from overlapping vertically while allowing the display to extend horizontally across the screen, maintaining both overview capability and individual job accessibility.
2Productivity
If the display scale is reduced to fit more jobs, then the productivity of monitoring multiple jobs is improved, but the operability of selecting and managing individual jobs deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
By introducing the time axis as an additional dimension for job arrangement, the system can display multiple jobs horizontally without vertical overlap. This maintains individual job images at selectable sizes while providing a comprehensive overview of the job schedule, thus preserving both productivity and operability.
3Loss of information
If jobs are arranged in succession on the screen, then the completeness of job information display is improved, but the visibility and selectability of each job becomes ambiguous
Solution Approach 1:
The time axis provides a clear spatial separation for each job along the horizontal direction, making each job distinctly visible and selectable. Jobs are arranged in chronological order without overlap, ensuring that all job information is visible while maintaining easy detectability and selectability through their positional separation.
Data Source
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AI summary
An image forming apparatus for executing a printing based on a job provided with job setting information, the apparatus includes: a display section which displays two or more job images on a screen, each of the job images representing each of two or more jobs; an operation section for changing a display scale of the two or more job images displayed on the display section; and a control section which controls to display the two or more job images having been displayed on the screen of the display section, as overlapped images in a same display area, based on an operation of changing the display scale in the screen, wherein the control section enables to select each of the overlapped job images displayed in the same display area on the screen.