Abstract

<aside> <img src="/icons/arrow-right-basic_lightgray.svg" alt="/icons/arrow-right-basic_lightgray.svg" width="40px" /> This study investigates the efficiency, speed, and ease of use for various reverse navigation patterns on portrait-oriented mobile devices. Seven experimental designs were tested, featuring different “Back” button placements, such as unified, distributed, top-left, bottom, top-right placements and more. Thirty-two professionals from the video game industry participated, performing tasks within interactive prototypes. The study aimed to capture interaction data and heatmaps, focusing on error rates, task completion times, and user satisfaction.

Analysis revealed that unified bottom-left placement exhibited the best performance, with the lowest error rates and shortest task completion times. Unified bottom-center placement followed closely, showing slightly higher variability but still maintaining low error rates. Unified placements generally demonstrated more consistent performance than distributed placements. Bottom placements generally resulted in fewer mistakes.

The findings suggest that unified bottom-left placement is optimal for reverse navigation on portrait-oriented mobile devices, highlighting the importance of consistency and predictability in mobile UI design. Future research should expand the dataset and explore the influence of aesthetic elements on reverse navigation patterns.

</aside>

Glossary

1. Related work

2. Introduction

2.1. Objective of the experiment

The goal of this experiment was to measure the efficiency, speed, user satisfaction and ease of use for different types of reverse navigational patterns (placement and function of back / close / cancel buttons) as applied to portrait-oriented mobile devices.

2.2. Primary metrics

2.3. Main differences between the experiments

2.4. Exact specifications of each experiment

Fig.10 - Comparison of all the different placements between each experiment, highlighting all of the reverse navigation patterns used and displaying them overlayed on top of each other. Read Sec.2.4. for more comprehensive explanation of each experiment

Fig.10 - Comparison of all the different placements between each experiment, highlighting all of the reverse navigation patterns used and displaying them overlayed on top of each other. Read Sec.2.4. for more comprehensive explanation of each experiment

3. Methodology

With the objective, relevant metrics and experiment variant specified, the first step in the analysis is to design a user test that would best capture the desired metrics.