Designing Small Touch Screen Devices: The Impact of Display Size on Pointing Performance
2010
The limited screen space in small touch screen devices imposes considerable usability challenges for human centered design. Thus, the tradeoff between object size and display size is crucial. In a previous study (Oehl, Sutter, and Ziefle, 2007), we found a strong effect of display size on pointing performance in a complex multidirectional serial pointing task. The very same task difficulty resulted in longer pointing times and a worse pointing accuracy on a smaller display compared to a bigger one. The central question of this current experimental study was, if this facilitating effect of display size is robust enough to appear and work even in a less complex and rather easy single pointing task. According to our previous experiment even for the less complex single pointing task, therc was a significant interaction between display size and increased task difficulty for movement time as well as for pointing errors. Results allow applied ergonomic guidelines for an optimized design of touch-based screen devices in terms of human centered design.