Dynamic visualization of large numbers of off-screen objects on mobile devices: an experimental comparison of wedge and overview+detail

Overview+Detail [25] and Wedge [16] have been proposed in the literature as effective approaches to resolve the off-screen objects problem on mobile devices. However, they have been studied with a small number of off-screen objects and (in most studies) with static scenarios, in which users did not have to perform any navigation activity. In this paper, we propose improvements to Wedge and Overview+Detail which are specifically aimed at simplifying their use in dynamic scenarios that involve large numbers of off-screen objects. We compare the effectiveness of the two approaches in the considered scenario with a user study, whose results show that Overview+Detail allows users to be faster in searching for off-screen objects and more accurate in estimating their location.