Investigating the Effect of Orientation and Visual Style on Touchscreen Slider Performance

Abstract

Sliders are one of the most fundamental components used in touchscreen user interfaces (UIs). When entering data using a slider, errors occur due e.g. to visual perception, resulting in inputs not matching what is intended by the user. However, it is unclear if the errors occur uniformly across the full range of the slider or if there are systematic offsets. We conducted a study to assess the errors occurring when entering values with horizontal and vertical sliders as well as two common visual styles. Our results reveal significant effects of slider orientation and style on the precision of the entered values. Furthermore, we identify systematic offsets that depend on the visual style and the target value. As the errors are partially systematic, they can be compensated to improve users' precision. Our findings provide UI designers with data to optimize user experiences in the wide variety of application areas where slider based touchscreen input is used.