EdgeSplit: Facilitating the Selection of Off-Screen Objects

Download Publication File

Abstract

Devices with small viewports (e.g., smartphones or GPS) result in interfaces where objects of interest can easily reside outside the view, into off-screen space. Researchers have addressed this challenge and have proposed visual cues to assist users in perceptually locating off-screen objects. However, little attention has been placed on methods for directly selecting these objects. Current designs of offscreen cues can result in overlaps that can make it difficult to use the cues as handles through which users can select the off-screen objects they represent. In this paper, we present EdgeSplit, a technique that facilitates both the visualization and selection of off-screen objects on small devices. EdgeSplit exploits the space around the device’s borders to display proxies of off-screen objects and then partitions the border regions to allow for non-overlapping areas that make selection of objects easier. We present an effective algorithm that provides such partitioning and demonstrate the effectiveness of EdgeSplit for selecting off-screen objects.

Publisher Link

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2371574.2371588&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE&CFID=194869224&CFTOKEN=53857588

Citation

Zahid Hossain, Khalad Hasan, Hai-Ning Liang and Pourang Irani.. 2012. EdgeSplit: Facilitating the Selection of Off-Screen Objects.. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2012). San Francisco, CA. ACM.

Bibtext Entry

@INPROCEEDINGS { ZahidMobileHCI2012,
    AUTHOR = { Zahid Hossain and Khalad Hasan and Hai-Ning Liang and Pourang Irani. },
    TITLE = { EdgeSplit: Facilitating the Selection of Off-Screen Objects. },
    BOOKTITLE = { Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2012) },
    YEAR = { 2012 },
    PUBLISHER = { ACM },
    ADDRESS = { San Francisco, CA },
}