AppLens and launchTile: two designs for one-handed thumb use on small devices

  • Authors:

  • Amy K. Karlson;Benjamin B. Bederson;John SanGiovanni

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Maryland, College Park, MD;University of Maryland, College Park, MD;Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

We present two interfaces to support one-handed thumb use for PDAs and cell phones. Both use Scalable User Interface (ScUI) techniques to support multiple devices with different resolutions and aspect ratios. The designs use variations of zooming interface techniques to provide multiple views of application data: AppLens uses tabular fisheye to access nine applications, while LaunchTile uses pure zoom to access thirty-six applications. We introduce two sets of thumb gestures, each representing different philosophies for one-handed interaction. We conducted two studies to evaluate our designs. In the first study, we explored whether users could learn and execute the AppLens gesture set with minimal training. Participants performed more accurately and efficiently using gestures for directional navigation than using gestures for object interaction. In the second study, we gathered user reactions to each interface, as well as comparative preferences. With minimal exposure to each design, most users favored AppLens's tabular fisheye interface.