Adaptive kinetic scrolling: Kinetic scrolling for large datasets on mobile devices

Scrolling is a frequently used Graphical User Interface widget that enables users to interact with a large amount of data using a limited viewport. However, if excessive data is included in the scroll, users are required to spend a substantial amount of time and effort to find the required information. In this paper, we present adaptive kinetic scrolling (AKS), a technique based on kinetic scrolling by which users can access target information more rapidly on mobile devices. Based on the user’s behavior, AKS detects situations when the user intends to access certain information that may be distant from the current viewport. At this point, AKS amplifies the speed of kinetic scrolling. Furthermore, the scrolling speed adapts according to the size of the remaining data to be scrolled. The more data that the scrolling widget contains, the more rapidly it scrolls so that the user can quickly reach the target. Kinetic scrolling is frequently used in scrolling widgets, and with AKS, users can save time and energy wasted on repetitive meaningless scrolling. We conducted a user study and verified that the proposed scrolling technique enables users to access target information more rapidly, particularly when there is a large dataset to navigate.