Supporting memory for spatial location while reading from small displays

1999. Kenton O'Hara, Abigail Sellen & Richard Bentley
CHI '99 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Abstract

Research has shown that when people read paper documents, they develop an incidental memory for the location of information within those documents. However, this kind of spatial memory is undermined in conventional on-line scrolling interfaces. We report on an experiment in which we show that careful design of the interface can reinstate memory for spatial location. As we will show, this has particular implications for the design of interfaces for small screen displays.

Read the full paper here ›

Citation

O'Hara, K., Sellen, A., & Bentley, R. (1999). Supporting memory for spatial location while reading from small displays. CHI '99 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 220–221). New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/632716.632853, doi:10.1145/632716.632853

BibTeX

@inproceedings{10.1145/632716.632853,
author = {O'Hara, Kenton and Sellen, Abigail and Bentley, Richard},
title = {Supporting memory for spatial location while reading from small displays},
year = {1999},
isbn = {1581131585},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/632716.632853},
doi = {10.1145/632716.632853},
abstract = {Research has shown that when people read paper documents, they develop an incidental memory for the location of information within those documents. However, this kind of spatial memory is undermined in conventional on-line scrolling interfaces. We report on an experiment in which we show that careful design of the interface can reinstate memory for spatial location. As we will show, this has particular implications for the design of interfaces for small screen displays.},
booktitle = {CHI '99 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
pages = {220–221},
numpages = {2},
keywords = {mobile devices, reading, small displays, spatial memory},
location = {Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania},
series = {CHI EA '99}
}