Situational impairments to mobile interaction in cold environments

Abstract

We evaluate the situational impairments caused by cold ambient temperature on fine-motor movement and vigilance during mobile interaction. For this purpose, we tested two mobile phone applications that measure fine motor skills and vigilance in controlled temperature settings. Our results show that cold adversely affected participants' fine-motor skills performance, but not vigilance. Based on our results we highlight the importance of correcting measurements when investigating performance of cognitive tasks to take into account the physical element of the tasks. Finally, we identify a number of design recommendations from literature that can mitigate the adverse effect of cold ambiance on interaction with mobile devices.