Lookahead Cascade for Table Access on Small Devices

Users increasingly expect access to Web data from a wide range of devices, both wired and wireless. The goal of our research is to inform the design of applications that support data access by providing reasonably seamless migration of data among internet-compatible devices with minimal loss of effectiveness and efficiency. This study focuses on overview representations of tables of data on small mobile devices, where the user selectively expands areas as needed to access individual cells. In this paper we report on the results of a user study that compares a lookahead technique with the more familiar column expansion technique for use with compressed tables on small screens. The results show little difference for simple tasks but that for complex tasks, the lookahead technique was more efficient and preferred to the column expansion technique when used with an overview representation of a table on a small screen device.