Studies Of Efficient Interfacial Navigation Techniques On Mobile Devices For Digital Libraries

We studied the potential application requirements of digital libraries(DLs)on mobile computing devices(e.g.,mobile phones and tablet pcs,etc.),navigational techniques being suitable for mobile devices,and the navigational performance difference between the approved navigation technique and the traditional navigation technique on mobile devices.We found that most of the investigated users of DLs had requirements to access services from DLs with mobile devices;however,these requirements had not been fully met yet.We also found that there were more than 95% investigated readers had regularly accessed no more than four service items from DLs in the past one month.From a survey of navigational techniques to find out a suitable technique for mobile devices,we found out that tilt gesture was the most suitable one.We asked the subjects to perform a quantitative experiment to determine the usability of the approved technique on a mobile device.The subjects performed navigational tasks with or without a GUI on a mobile phone when they were standing still or walking.The average time per trial was about one second and the average error rate decreased to less than 2% in the last block.From a comparative experiment between the mobile APP with the approved interfacial navigation technique and the traditional navigation technique based on the practical DL of Lanzhou University,we found out significant improvements of navigational speed and accuracy with the approved technique over the traditional method.