Fingerprint Scroll: Comparison of Touchless and Touch-Based Scroll Navigation Methods

We conducted a user study comparing the efficiency and speed of three scroll navigation methods for touch-screen mobile devices: Tap Scroll (the traditional touch-based method), Kinetic Scroll (a touch-based gestural method), and Fingerprint Scroll (our newly introduced hybrid method). The study involved 12 participants and employed a Google Pixel device. The accuracy results for Fingerprint Scroll were higher, with an average accuracy of 97.6% compared to 96.3% for Tap Scroll and 88.7% for Kinetic Scroll. The completion time for Fingerprint Scroll was 2.43 times longer than that for Kinetic Scroll and 2.32 times longer than for Tap Scroll. Despite the long completion times, participants showed a preference for Fingerprint Scroll because of ease-of-use, high accuracy, and interruption-free vision while reading ebooks. The latter is a significant issue for Kinetic and Tap Scroll because gestures are touch-based and hence the display view is obscured. Participants did not value the higher speed of navigation using Kinetic Scroll over Fingerprint Scroll for web browsing.