The effect of egocentric body movements on users' navigation performance and spatial memory in zoomable user interfaces

  • Authors:
  • Roman Rädle;Hans-Christian Jetter;Simon Butscher;Harald Reiterer

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany;University College London, London, United Kingdom;University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany;University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2013 ACM international conference on Interactive tabletops and surfaces
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

We present two experiments examining the impact of navigation techniques on users' navigation performance and spatial memory in a zoomable user interface (ZUI). The first experiment with 24 participants compared the effect of egocentric body movements with traditional multi-touch navigation. The results indicate a 47% decrease in path lengths and a 34% decrease in task time in favor of egocentric navigation, but no significant effect on users' spatial memory immediately after a navigation task. However, an additional second experiment with 8 participants revealed such a significant increase in performance of long-term spatial memory: The results of a recall task administered after a 15-minute distractor task indicate a significant advantage of 27% for egocentric body movements in spatial memory. Furthermore, a questionnaire about the subjects' workload revealed that the physical demand of the egocentric navigation was significantly higher but there was less mental demand.