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Information presentation in small screen devices: the trade-off between visual density and menu foresight.
1Communication Science, Human Technology Centre, RWTH Aachen University, Theaterplatz 14, Aachen, Germany. Ziefle@humtec.rwth-aachen.de
Applied Ergonomics
|April 13, 2010
Summary
Designing mobile devices for older adults requires balancing readability and menu orientation. Optimal navigation performance is achieved with larger font sizes and more functions displayed per screen, prioritizing orientation for aged users.
Area of Science:
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Gerontology
- Usability Engineering
Background:
- Small mobile device displays present challenges for information presentation, particularly for the growing population of aged users.
- Optimizing display design involves a trade-off between information readability (requiring low density and large fonts) and menu orientation (requiring high density and large previews).
Purpose of the Study:
- To experimentally investigate the trade-off between display readability and menu orientation for older mobile device users.
- To determine the optimal combination of font size and preview size for navigation performance in this demographic.
Main Methods:
- Forty older participants completed nine common mobile phone navigation tasks on a simulated device.
- Font size (8pt vs. 12pt) and preview size (one vs. five functions per screen) were systematically varied.
- Navigation performance was measured to assess the impact of these display parameters.
Main Results:
- Both font size and preview size significantly impacted navigation performance.
- An interaction effect was observed, with optimal performance occurring at large font sizes and large previews.
- The lowest performance was recorded with a small preview and large font size, indicating orientation is more critical than visibility.
Conclusions:
- For older adults using mobile devices, larger font sizes combined with displaying more functions per screen (larger preview) enhance navigation performance.
- Design guidelines should prioritize menu orientation over simple visibility demands for this user group.
- These findings can inform ergonomic guidelines for optimizing small-screen information presentation for aged users.
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