Skip to main content
Log in

On the effectiveness of Overview+Detail visualization on mobile devices

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Overview+Detail visualization is one of the major approaches to the display of large information spaces on a computer screen. Widely used in desktop applications, its feasibility on mobile devices has been scarcely investigated. This paper first provides a detailed analysis of the literature on Overview+Detail visualization, discussing and comparing the results of desktop and mobile studies to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the approach. The analysis reveals open issues worthy of additional investigation and can provide useful indications to interface designers. Then, the paper presents an experiment that studies unexplored aspects of the design space for mobile interfaces based on the Overview+Detail approach, investigating the effect of letting users manipulate the overview to navigate maps and the effect of highlighting possible objects of interest in the overview to support search tasks. Results of the experiment suggest that both direct manipulation of the overview and highlighting objects of interest in the overview have a positive effect on user performance in terms of the time to complete search tasks on mobile devices, but do not provide specific advantages in terms of recall of the spatial configuration of targets.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Ahlberg C, Shneiderman B (1994) The alphaslider: a compact and rapid selector. In: Proceedings of CHI 1994, ACM Press, pp 365–371

  2. Baudisch P, Rosenholtz R (2003) Halo: a technique for visualizing off-screen locations. In: Proceedings of CHI 2003, ACM Press, pp 481–488

  3. Baudisch P, Good N, Bellotti V, Schraedley P (2002) Keeping things in context: a comparative evaluation of focus plus context screens, overviews, and zooming. In: Proceedings of CHI 2002, ACM Press, pp 259–266

  4. Baudisch P, Lee B, Hanna L (2004) Fishnet, a fisheye web browser with search term popouts: a comparative evaluation with overview and linear view. In: Proceedings of AVI 2004, ACM Press, pp 133–140

  5. Beard D, Walker J (1990) Navigational techniques to improve the display of large two-dimensional spaces. Behav Inform Technol 9(6):451–466

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Bederson B, Hollan J (1994) Pad++: a zooming graphical interface for exploring alternate interface physics. In: Proceedings of UIST 1994, ACM Press, pp 17–26

  7. Brunner E, Munzel U (1999) Rank-score tests in factorial designs with repeated measures. J Multivariate Anal 70:286–317

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  8. Burigat S, Chittaro L (2011) Visualizing references to off-screen content on mobile devices: a comparison of arrows, wedge, and overview+detail. Interact Comput 23(2):156–166

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Burigat S, Chittaro L, Gabrielli S (2006) Visualizing locations of off-screen objects on mobile devices: a comparative evaluation of three approaches. In: Proceedings of MobileHCI 2006, ACM Press, pp 239–246

  10. Burigat S, Chittaro L, Parlato E (2008) Map, diagram, and web page navigation on mobile devices: the effectiveness of zoomable user interfaces with overviews. In: Proceedings of MobileHCI 2008, ACM Press, pp 147–156

  11. Büring T, Gerken J, Reiterer H (2006) Usability of overview-supported zooming on small screens with regard to individual differences in spatial ability. In: Proceedings of AVI 2006, ACM Press, pp 233–240

  12. Card S, Mackinlay J, Shneiderman B (1999) Readings in information visualization. Morgan Kaufmann, Massachusetts

    Google Scholar 

  13. Chen C (2006) Information visualization: beyond the horizon. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  14. Chittaro L (2006) Visualizing information on mobile devices. IEEE Comput 39(3):40–45

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Cockburn A, Karlson A, Bederson B (2008) A review of overview+detail, zooming, and focus+context interfaces. ACM Comput Surv 41(1):1–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Ghosh P, Shneiderman B (1999) Zoom-only versus overview-detail pair: a study in browsing techniques as applied to patient histories. In: Technical report HCIL-99-12, Human-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland, College Park

  17. Gustafson S, Baudisch P, Gutwin C, Irani P (2008) Wedge: clutter-free visualization of off-screen locations. In: Proceedings of CHI 2008, ACM Press, pp 787–796

  18. Gutwin C, Skopik A (2003) Fisheyes are good for large steering tasks. In: Proceedings of CHI 2003, ACM Press, pp 201–208

  19. Hornbaek K, Frokjaer E (2001) Reading of electronic documents: The usability of linear, fisheye, and overview+detail interfaces. In: Proceedings of CHI 2001, ACM Press, pp 293–300

  20. Hornbaek K, Frokjaer E (2003) Reading patterns and usability in visualizations of electronic documents. ACMT Comput Hum Int 10(2):119–149

    Google Scholar 

  21. Hornbaek K, Hertzum M (2011) The notion of overview in information visualization. Int J Hum Comput Stud 69(7-8):509–525

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Hornbaek K, Bederson B, Plaisant C (2002) Navigation patterns and usability of zoomable user interfaces with and without an overview. ACMT Comput Hum Int 9(4):362–389

    Google Scholar 

  23. Leung YK, Apperley MD (1994) A review and taxonomy of distortion-oriented presentation techniques. ACMT Comput Hum Int 1(2):126–160

    Google Scholar 

  24. Nekrasovski D, Bodnar A, McGrenere J, Guimbretiere F, Munzner T (2006) An evaluation of pan&zoom and rubber sheet navigation with and without an overview. In: Proceedings of CHI 2006, ACM Press, pp 11–20

  25. North C, Shneiderman B (2000) Snap-together visualization: can users construct and operate coordinated visualizations? Int J Hum-Comput Stud 53(5):715–739

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  26. Perlin K, Fox D (1993) Pad: an alternative approach to the computer interface. In: Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 1993, ACM Press, pp 57–64

  27. Pietriga E, Appert C, Beaudouin-Lafon M (2007) Pointing and beyond: an operationalization and preliminary evaluation of multi-scale searching. In: Proceedings of CHI 2007, ACM Press, pp 1215–1224

  28. Plaisant C, Carr D, Shneiderman B (1995) Image-browser taxonomy and guidelines for designers. IEEE Softw 12(2):21–32

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Roto V, Popescu A, Koivisto A, Vartiainen E (2006) Minimap: a web page visualization method for mobile phones. In: Proceedings of CHI 2006, ACM Press, pp 35–44

  30. Shneiderman B (1998) Designing the user interface. Addison-Wesley, Boston

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) within the FIRB project number RBIN04M8S8.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefano Burigat.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Burigat, S., Chittaro, L. On the effectiveness of Overview+Detail visualization on mobile devices. Pers Ubiquit Comput 17, 371–385 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0500-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0500-3

Keywords

Navigation