One Way or Another I’m Gonna Find Ya: The Influence of Input Mechanism on Scrolling in Complex Digital Collections

Creating effective interfaces for browsing is a key challenge in digital libraries. In a desktop computing-based world, large screen real estate and vertical-only scrolling were major drivers of the design of DL interfaces. Mobile computing presents new challenges and opportunities for DLs: screens are smaller, but touch screens afford interactions that have not been possible in the past. In this paper we compare the effect of input modality-touch vs. scrolling-on navigation in interfaces designed for book browsing. We specifically address effectiveness and user satisfaction with horizontal and two-dimensional scrolling, which has traditionally had low acceptability to users and thus drastically limited the information presentation options available in digital libraries.