Evaluating Alternatives to the 2D Grid ...

In recent years point-and-shoot cameras were largely replaced by smartphones and tablets. For example, in the device chart of the Flickr photo sharing site the first four devices are smartphones. Eight megapixel sensors are already standard in high-end smartphones and Nokia released in 2012 a smartphone with a 41 megapixel sensor, aiming at product categories above point-and-shoot cameras. Since smartphones and tablets are easy to use and highly portable they are an easy choice for shooting images on the go. Therefore, image collections on the devices grow fast but the default grid-based image browsing interfaces are increasingly overwhelmed by the amount of images. They make it very difficult to find images fast and effortless. We therefore investigate the performance of new image browsing interfaces for smartphones and tablets, which utilize simple content-based sorting and 3D visualization to improve search time. In two user studies we compare a color sorted 3D-globe, 3D-ring, a zoomable image pane interface and a traditional grid-based image browsing interface. Our evaluations on tablets and smartphones show that especially 3D can reduce search time when there is enough screen space. On the other hand, it looses its advantage on smaller screens.