Insights into human visual attention have benefited many areas of computing, but perhaps most significantly visualisation and UI design [3]. With the proliferation of mobile devices capable of supporting significantly complex applications on small screens, demands on mobile UI design and the user's visual system are becoming greater. In this paper, we report results from an empirical study of human visual attention, specifically the Change Blindness phenomenon, on handheld mobile devices and its impact on mobile UI design. It is arguable that due to the small size of the screen - unlike a typical computer monitor - a greater visual coverage of the mobile device is possible, and that these phenomena may occur less frequently during the use of the device, or even that they may not occur at all. Our study shows otherwise. We tested for Change Blindness (CB) and Inattentional Blindness (IB) in a single-modal, mobile context and attempted to establish factors in the application interface design that induce and/or reduce their occurrences. The results show that both CB and IB can and do occur while using mobile devices. The results also suggest that the number of separate attendable items on-screen is directly proportional to rates of CB. Newly inserted objects were correctly identified more often than changes applied to existing on-screen objects. These results suggest that it is important for mobile UI designers to take these aspects of visual attention into account when designing mobile applications that attempt to deliver information through visual changes or notifications. Copyright 2012 ACM.
['Thomas Y. Davies', 'Ashweeni Beeharee']
The case of the missed icon: Change Blindness on mobile devices