Need for non-visual feedback with long response times in mobile HCI

ABSTRACT

When browsing Web pages with a mobile device, the system response times are variable and much longer than on a PC. Users must repeatedly glance at the display to see when the page finally arrives, although mobility demands a Minimal Attention User Interface. We conducted a user study with 27 participants to discover the point at which visual feedback stops reaching the user in mobile context. In the study, we examined the deployment of attention during page loading to the phone vs. the environment in several different everyday mobility contexts, and compared these to the laboratory context. The first part of the page appeared on the screen typically in 11 seconds, but we found that the user's visual attention shifted away from the mobile browser usually between 4 and 8 seconds in the mobile context. In contrast, the continuous span of attention to the browser was more than 14 seconds in the laboratory condition. Based on our study results, we recommend mobile applications provide multimodal feedback for delays of more than four seconds.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.2 User/Machine Systems
          Subjects: Human factors

General Terms:
Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
attention, mobile web, mobility, multimodal feedback, usability