Research Reports

• Research Reports Home
• UC Research Repository
• Honours Reports
• Reports Manager (CSSE Staff Only)

HONS 09/09

Improved Mobile Scrolling Interfaces

Stephen Fitchett
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering
University of Canterbury

Abstract

Mobile devices are everywhere, and their capabilities are impressive: they have gigabytes of data storage, abundant applications, graphics processors, and high bandwidth wireless communications. In many ways, they are yesterday’s desktop computer in your palm. And there lies the problem: their input and output devices are tiny, and interaction methods have not kept pace with the miniaturisation. This project examines the mobile scrolling design space and proposes two new touch based scrolling interfaces. The first is a tiered alphabet scroller, which is a specialised interface designed specifically for navigating alphabetically sorted lists. An evaluation did not show a performance improvement over a standard non-tiered scroller, but users generally preferred it and we gained insights into how it is used. The second is a general purpose hybrid scrolling technique that allows for a combination of rate based scrolling for navigating short and medium distances and zeroorder scrolling for navigating large distances. Evaluations showed that each component of this hybrid technique performed well for certain complementary types of tasks and that they would work together well as a hybrid technique.