Focus+context visualization techniques for displaying large lists with multiple points of interest on small tactile screens

Abstract. This paper presents a focus+context visualization and interaction technique for displaying large lists on handheld devices. This technique has been specifically designed to fit the constraints of small tactile screens. Thanks to its spiral layout, it provides a global view of large lists on a limited amount of screen real-estate. It has also been designed to allow direct interaction with fingers. This technique proposes an alternative to multi-focus visualization, called “augmented context”, where several objects of interest can be pointed up simultaneously. We propose two implementations of this approach that either use spatial or temporal composition. We conducted a controlled experiment that compares our approach to standard scrollable lists for a search task on a PDA phone. Results show that our technique significantly reduces the error rate (about 3.7 times lower) without loss of performance