Evaluating reading and analysis tasks on mobile devices: a case study of tilt and flick scrolling

• Authors: Stephen Fitchett;Andy Cockburn
• Venue: OZCHI '09 Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group: Design: Open 24/7
• Year: 2009

Flick scrolling is a natural scrolling method for mobile touch devices such as the iPhone™. It is useful not only for its performance but perhaps even more so for its ease of use and user experience. Tilt scrolling instead uses the device's tilt to determine the rate of scrolling, which offers several potential interaction advantages over touch sensitive alternatives: scrolling can be achieved without occluding a large proportion of the screen with a hand, finger, or thumb; it frees drag input events for other important actions such as text selection and drag-and-drop; and it works regardless of the hand's state (e.g. moist or gloved). Although previously described, the performance of tilt scrolling has not been compared to flick scrolling, which is now the state of the art. Furthermore, it is unclear how such an empirical comparison should be conducted. To better understand interaction with mobile scrolling, we propose a new method of evaluating scrolling interfaces in the context of reading or analysis tasks. These activities typically involve slow subtle scroll movements rather than large movements typical investigated in most scrolling evaluations. We use this method to thoroughly compare flick scrolling and tilt scrolling. We show that tilt scrolling results in better performance for tasks performed while stationary while there is no significant difference while moving. However, we find that participants prefer flick scrolling and walk faster when completing moving tasks with flick scrolling than tilt scrolling.