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| Author(s) |
Büring, T., Gerken, J., Reiterer, H. |
| Title |
Usability of overview-supported zooming on small screens with regard to individual differences in spatial ability |
| Abstract |
While zoomable user interfaces can improve the usability of
applications by easing data access, a drawback is that some
users tend to become lost after they have zoomed in. Previous
studies indicate that this effect could be related to
individual differences in spatial ability. To overcome such
orientation problems, many desktop applications feature an
additional overview window showing a miniature of the entire
information space. Small devices, however, have a very
limited screen real estate and incorporating an overview window
often means pruning the size of the detail view considerably.
Given this context, we report the results of a user
study in which 24 participants solved search tasks by using
two zoomable scatterplot applications on a PDA - one
of the applications featured an overview, the other relied
solely on the detail view. In contrast to similar studies for
desktop applications, there was no significant difference in
user preference between the interfaces. On the other hand,
participants solved search tasks faster without the overview.
This indicates that, on small screens, a larger detail view
can outweigh the benefits gained from an overview window.
Individual differences in spatial ability did not have a significant
effect on task-completion times although results suggest
that participants with higher spatial ability were slowed
down by the overview more than low spatial-ability users. |
| Download |
BuGeRe06.pdf |
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