Want to be a speed-reader? Want to ditch the traditional scrolling technique we’ve become so accustomed to while reading a plethora of e-mails, work documents, books, and parent resources each day?
Researchers from Finland’s Aalto University have come up with a prototype technique that uses a transparent layer to highlight important aspects of whatever document you’re reading to decrease time on page.
“In conventional scrolling a number of objects are moving in the viewer window, which is problematic for visual attention. First, motion blur makes it impossible to focus on an object. Second, the user is not able to direct attention for long enough to comprehend the content before it scrolls out of the window,” said Byungjoo Lee, postdoctoral researcher.
Watch it in action.
Lee teamed up with Olli Savisaari and Antti Oulasvirta to develop a new scrolling technique that better supports data processing in three different ways.
“Browsing of long texts speeds up by 60% and less than half as much time is spent locating the desired locations in the text. In addition, the probability of noticing points of interest in the text is increased by 210% compared to normal scrolling technique,” said Lee.
The prototype technique, named Spotlights is based on the spotlight metaphor of human visual attention. According to previous research, visual attention needs about half a second to focus, which is clearly longer than the average amount of time that a sentence or picture remains on the screen when using normal scrolling techniques.
Spotlights scans a web page, locates the visually important elements and then present them to the reader using a transparent layer that appears on top of the text. The system selects what you should focus on and then allows you enough time to do so. The elements can be pictures, tables or headlines.
“Our empirical evaluation showed that benefits are significant. In this way people can scroll through as many as 20 pages per second and still retain information. The technique improves recollection of browsed information,” said Oulasvirta.
According to the team, this is the first of its kind technique that aims to maximize the amount of information on the screen for a human’s attention span. So far it has received positive feedback in testing.
Next, the researchers will attempt to put the technique into practice within web browsers and PDF viewers.
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