Interfaces for palmtop image search

Will current technology support search for video news or entertainment on mobile platforms? An Ipaq palmtop version of the Informedia Digital Video Library interface has already been developed at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. For these displays, the desktop technique of showing a large grid of images in parallel is not feasible. Perceptual psychology experiments suggest that time-multiplexing may be as effective as space-multiplexing for this kind of primed recognition task. In fact, it has been specifically suggested that image retrieval interfaces using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) may perform significantly better than parallel presentation even on a desktop computer [2]. In our experiments, we did not find this to be true. An important difference between previous RSVP experiments and our own is that image search engines rank retrievals, and correct answers are more likely to occur early in the list of results. Thus we found that scrolling (and low RSVP presentation rates) led to better recognition of answers that occur early, but worse for answers that occur far down the list. This split confounded the global effects that we hypothesized, yet in itself is an important consideration for future interface designs, which must adapt as search technology improves.