Evaluation of Image Browsing Interfaces for Smartphones and Tablets

Smartphones and tablets are popular devices. As lightweight, compact devices with built-in high-quality cameras, they are ideal to carry around and to use for snapshot photography. As the number of photos accumulate on the device quickly finding a particular photo can be tedious using the default grid-based photo browser installed on the device. In this paper we investigate user performance in a photo browsing task on an iPad and an iPod Touch device. We present results from two user experiments comparing the standard grid interface to a pan-and-zoom able grid, a 3D-globe and a 3D-ring. In particular we are interested in how the interfaces perform with large photo collections (100 to 400 photos). The results show most promise for the pan-and-zoom grid and that the performance with the standard grid interface quickly deteriorates with large collections.