Effects of Increasing Command Capacity of Spatial Memory Menus in Tablets

Spatially-stable touch menus, like FastTap, leverage users’ spatial memory to enable rapid command selection on tablets. Although these spatial tablet interfaces can aid in developing spatial memory of commands having a small command set, it is, however, unknown whether spatial memory remains beneficial when the number of commands grows. Therefore, we carried out a study to investigate spatial learning in four different sizes of single-tab FastTap Menus: Small, Medium, Large, and Extra-Large, with 16, 30, 42, and 56 items, respectively. Results indicated that people do develop spatial memory in all menus; however, there is a negative correlation between command capacity and spatial memory development in tablets. We contribute new knowledge on spatial memory development in touch tablets that can enhance the design of future spatial memory-based tablet interfaces.