Multi-flick: An Evaluation of Flick-based Scrolling Techniques for Pen Interfaces

Multi-flick, which consists of repeated flick actions, has received media attention as an intuitive and natural docu-ment-scrolling technique for stylus based systems. In this paper we put multi-flick to test, by designing several flick-based scrolling techniques. We map out the design space of multi-flick and identify mapping functions that make multi-flick a natural and intuitive technique for document naviga-tion. We then compare several multi-flick variations for navigating lists on three different devices – a PDA, a ta-bletPC, and a large table. Our study shows that compound-multi-flick (CMF) is the most preferred technique and it is at least as fast, if not faster than the traditional scrollbar. In a follow-up study, we evaluate multi-flick for scrolling text-based documents. Results show that all implementa-tions of multi-flick are as good as the scrollbar for short distances while CMF is the most preferred. We discuss the implications of our findings and present several design guidelines. ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces and presen