Multi-context photo browsing on mobile devices based on tilt dynamics

Abstract

This paper presents a photo browsing system on mobile devices to browse and search photos efficiently by tilting action. It employs tilt dynamics and a multi-scale photo screen layout for enhancing the browsing and the search capability respectively. The implementation uses continuous inputs from an accelerometer, and a multimodal (visual, audio and vibrotactile) display coupled with the states of this model. The model is based on a simple physical model, with its characteristics shaped to enhance controllability. The multi-scale layout holds both local and global view for users to both control photos and look at the surrounding context in a single framework. The experiment on Samsung MITs PDA used seven novice users browsing from 100 photos. We compare a tilt-based interaction method with a button-based browser and an iPod wheel by a quantitative usability criteria and subjective experience. The proposed tilt dynamics improves the usability over conventional dynamics. The iPod wheel has mixed performance comparing worse on some metrics than button pushing or tilt interaction, despite its commercial popularity.