A comparison of two smartphone time-picking interfaces

Alarm clocks are important aids that helps us keep a regular routine. This study explores two time-picking interfaces available on Android Smartphones, namely the digit-wheel and dial time-pickers. The digit-wheel time-picker exploits the traditional digit alarm clock metaphor where one cycles through a wheel of hours and a wheel of minutes using multiple small gestures. The dial time-picker is inspired by the analogue clock face and utilizes the real estate of the touch display though single gestures. A mixed experimental design was carried out to compare the efficiency of the two interfaces. The results show that on the first attempt, the digit-wheel time-picker is faster than the dial time-picker, but after a few attempts, the dial time-picker becomes significantly faster than the digit-wheel time-picker. Prior experience with the dial interface had only an interaction effect on the results.