Arranging Icons on Small Displays: Do Hexagonal Layouts Improve Search Performance?

Mobile devices with small displays can use hexagonal layouts of circular icons to use space more efficiently – we test whether this design choice improves people's search performance. An experiment is reported in which 24 participants performed known-item searches of menus that varied along four dimensions: (1) whether icons were arranged using a hexagonal or a grid layout, (2) how closely icons were placed next to each other, (3) the number of icons in the display that shared the same color as the target, and (4) whether icons stayed in the same location or moved between trials. Results show that search times were faster with hexagonal layouts but only when there were many same-color distractors and icons were packed very close to each other. This work contributes new empirical findings on how icon arrangements, in interaction with other critical visual design features, affect search performance.