Gesture Research – Data Analysis (Part 4: Experiential Differences)

As mentioned in Protocol – Part 1: Equipment, we used 40 participants, 20 of which were novices to touchscreen interfaces and did not own a touchscreen device and 20 of which were experts and did own a touchscreen handheld device. To analyze whether there were differences between the novices and the experts, we calculated Jacaard two-way agreement scores for each Action for both Novices and Experts.

A Jacaard two-way agreement score is a measure of the similarity or differences within a set of data. It ranges from 0 to 1. If all the items within a dataset differ, the score will be a 0. If all the items within a dataset are exactly the same, the score will be a 1. Thus, higher scores indicated greater similarity of items in the dataset, and thus higher agreement.

Table 1. Agreement scores for novices and experts

As can be seen in this dataset, Novices and Experts had very similar agreement scores, with a few exceptions (outlined in blue).

We also conducted a visual inspection of the data itself . We looked at the detailed results for both Novices and Experts, as shown in Data Analysis (Part 2: Winners and Tails), and looked for differences between the two groups that were explainable based on experience. We found no strong pattern to any of the differences we saw that was explainable based on experience (aside from the pattern already noted above for Zoom In and Zoom Out).

As mentioned in Data Analysis (Part 3: Cultural Differences), however, we investigated the cause of the seemingly cultural influence on Scroll Up, Scroll Down, Back, and Forward. These actions are directional in nature (people tended to view the Back Action as retrieving a page to the left of the visible page and the Forward action as retrieving a page to the right of the visible page). In each of these, roughly half the participants scrolled one way while the other half scrolled the other way. In looking at this data a little more closely, it shows France and Spain tending to go one direction with many of the other countries going the other direction. At first, we thought this may be a cultural difference. However, when looking at the data closely, we discovered it was actually an experiential difference.

Swiping up to scroll down is a behavior found in most touchscreen devices that do not show scroll bars and that are “finger-driven” touchscreen interfaces. Swiping down to scroll down is a behavior found in most non-touchscreen devices (those that use navigation keys) and in touchscreen interfaces that do show a scroll bar, most commonly found on “stylus-driven” touchscreen interfaces. We hypothesized that experience with finger-driven interfaces may provide a better explanation of the differences that we saw in these actions

So, we classified every user’s phone as a “finger-driven” touchscreen phone, a “stylus-driven” touchscreen phone, or not (“none”) a touchscreen phone at all (made up of the Novices in this study). We then looked at the number of people who own a finger-drive touchscreen phone and the direction that they scrolled, and the number of people who own a stylus-driven touchscreen phone or didn’t own a touchscreen phone at all and the direction that they scrolled. In the end, we found that those who own a finger-driven touchscreen phone were far more likely, in general, to swipe up to Scroll Down, swipe down to Scroll Up, swipe left to go Forward, and swipe right to go Back. Thus, it seems what was once thought to be a cultural difference was in actuality an experiential difference.

Tables 1-4 below show the results of this analysis.

Table 1. Back

Table 2. Forward

Table 3. Scroll Down

Table 4. Scroll Up