Visualizing locations of off-screen objects on mobile devices

Browsing large information spaces such as maps on the limited of mobile devices often requires people to perform panning zooming operations that move relevant display content offscreen. makes it difficult to perform spatial tasks such as the location of Points Of Interest (POIs) in a city. the location of off-screen objects can mitigate this : in this paper, we present a user study comparing the [2] approach with two other techniques based on arrows. surrounds off-screen objects with circles that reach the window, so that users can derive the location and distance objects by observing the visible portion of the corresponding . In the two arrow-based techniques, arrows point at objects their size and body length, respectively, inform about the of objects. Our study involved four tasks requiring users identify and compare off-screen objects locations, and also the effectiveness of the three techniques with respect the number of off-screen objects. Arrows allowed users to off-screen objects faster and more accurately according to distance, while Halo allowed users to better identify the location of off-screen objects. Implications of these results mobile map-based applications are also discussed.