How screen transitions influence touch and pointer interaction across angled display arrangements

Digital office environments often integrate multiple displays in a variety of arrangements. We investigated the combination of a horizontal and a directly connected vertical display, which together form a digital workspace. In particular, we were interested in the effect of the physical transition (bezel, edge or curve) on dragging. In a study participants performed dragging tasks across both display planes with direct touch as well as a pointing device. Contrary to our expectations, we found no significant effect on task completion time. Only regarding accuracy the curved transition performed better than edge and bezel. Interestingly, the subjective judgment did generally not match the objective results. These findings suggest that we need to rethink our understanding of display continuities in terms of usability as well as user satisfaction.