Tuning and testing scrolling interfaces that automatically zoom

Abstract

Speed dependent automatic zooming (SDAZ) is a promising refinement to scrolling in which documents are automatically zoomed-out as the scroll rate increases. By automatically zooming, the visual flow rate is reduced enabling rapid scrolling without motion blur. In order to aid SDAZ calibration we theoretically and empirically scrutinise human factors of the speed/zoom relationship. We then compare user performance with four alternative text-document scrolling systems, two of which employ automatic zooming. One of these systems, which we term 'DDAZ', is based on van Wijk and Nuij's recent and important theory that calculates optimal pan/zoom paths between known locations in 2D space. van Wijk and Nuij suggested that their theory could be applied to scrolling, but did not implement or test their formulaic suggestions. Participants in our evaluation (n=27) completed scrolling tasks most rapidly when using SDAZ, followed by DDAZ, normal scrollbars, and traditional rate-based scrolling. Workload assessments and preferences strongly favoured SDAZ. We finish by examining issues for consideration in commercial deployments.