Revisiting Read Wear: Analysis, Design, and Evaluation of a Footprints Scrollbar

Alexander, J., Cockburn, A., Fitchett, S., Gutwin, C. and Greenberg, S. (2009)
Revisiting Read Wear: Analysis, Design, and Evaluation of a Footprints Scrollbar. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - ACM CHI'09. ACM Press, pages 1665-1674, includes video figure, April 4-9. Earlier version available (same video) as Report TR-COSC-02-08 (2008), Comp. Science, Univ. Canterbury, New Zealand.

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Abstract

In this paper, we show that people frequently return to previously-visited regions within their documents, and that scrollbars can be enhanced to ease this task. We analysed 120 days of activity logs from Microsoft Word and Adobe Reader. Our analysis shows that region revisitation is a common activity that can be supported with relatively short recency lists. This establishes an empirical foundation for the design of an enhanced scrollbar containing scrollbar marks that helps people return to previously visited document regions. Two controlled experiments show that scrollbar marks decrease revisitation time, and that a large number of marks can be used effectively. We then design an enhanced Footprints scrollbar that supports revisitation with several features, including scrollbar marks and mark thumbnails. Two further experiments show that the Footprints scrollbar was frequently used and strongly preferred over traditional scrollbars.

Keywords

Document revisitation, read wear, scrolling

Bibtex entry

@INPROCEEDINGS { 2009-Readwear.CHI,
CLASS = { CONFARTICLE },
AUTHOR = { Alexander, J. and Cockburn, A. and Fitchett, S. and Gutwin, C. and Greenberg, S. },
TITLE = { Revisiting Read Wear: Analysis, Design, and Evaluation of a Footprints Scrollbar },
YEAR = { 2009 },
MONTH = { April 4-9 },
BOOKTITLE = { Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - ACM CHI'09 },
PUBLISHER = { ACM Press },
PAGES = { 1665-1674, includes video figure },
KEYWORDS = { Document revisitation, read wear, scrolling },
NOTE = { Earlier version available (same video) as Report TR-COSC-02-08 (2008), Comp. Science, Univ. Canterbury, New Zealand },
}