Swiping up/down for mobile gallery navigation: The role of instruction design type
Robert Sedovšek, M. Pogačnik, Aleš Hladnik · 2017 Computing Conference · 2017
The goal of the presented study was to investigate the role of instructions for performing navigation through a mobile photo gallery, which is a common element in rich media mobile advertising. Four different design types — “Always On”, “Animation”, “Icons” and “Interstitial” — were investigated in their ability to instruct smartphone users in implementing a less common — swipe up or down — gesture to browse the photos. Of particular interest were user engagement, assessed by the number of photos viewed, and potential usability issues as indicated by the number of performed faulty gestures, i.e. gestures that were not instructed for navigation, such as swipe left/right or tap. Based on one- and two-way ANOVA results, no statistically significant differences in the abandon rates among different instruction design types were found. Results also showed that the number of faulty gestures was significantly higher when using “Animation” and “Icons” instructions when compared to the other two instruction types. The number of images viewed was as anticipated low in “Icons” but surprisingly — based on the faulty gestures findings — much higher in “Animation”.