The number of available mobile applications is steadily increasing. People have rapidly adopted application stores as means to customize their devices with various functionalities that go beyond communication. Understanding the principles of mobile application usage is crucial for supporting users within this new ecosystem. In this paper, we investigate how people organize applications they have installed on their devices. We asked more than 130 participants for their habits for icon arrangement and collected more than 1,400 screenshots of their devices’ menus to further ground our findings. Based on this data we can distinguish five different concepts for arranging icons on smartphone menus, e.g. based on application usage frequency and applications’ functional relatedness. Additionally, we investigated how these concepts emerge in relation to frequency of application installations, removals and icon rearrangements, as well as users’ experience levels. Finally we discuss implications for the design of smartphone launchers, and highlight differences to icon arrangement on stationary computers.

1. A Study on Icon Arrangement
by Smartphone Users
Matthias Böhmer and Antonio Krüger
Ubiquitous Media Technologies Lab
DFKI GmbH // Saarland University

2. 30y ago

3. evolution

4. today

5. today

6. today

7. How do people
arrange their
icons?

8. - Barreau and Nardi, 1995 [2]
- Studies on file organization on stationary computers
- People put icons to special places
- Shipman et al., 1995 [23]
- People create implicit structures
when manipulating layouts
- Ravasio et al., 2004 [20]
- People cluster documents by their types
- People dedicate screen areas to different purposes
- Ziefle and Bay, 2004 [27]
- People built mental models of their phone menus
Related work
Ravasio et al. 2004 [20]

9. Study

10. Quantitative data, e.g.
- number of apps
- number of folders
- number of icons on page
- x/y position of icons
Qualitative data
- participants‘ experience levels
- concepts of icon arrangement
- participants labeled with
oncepts
„most used apps first
page, groups of apps 2nd
space, then games“
„most-used items should
be on the first page,
otherwise I try to group
items (e.g., news outlets
together)“
...
1
2
Screenshot Study
grounded theory
majority rule
template matching

11. - 132 people have sent 1,486 screenshots
- 22 women, 108 men, 2 unknown
- 106 iPhone users, 26 Android users
- Mean age was 28.3 years (SD 8.5)
- 60.5% Germany, 11.4% USA, 4.5% UK
- We cleaned the data set
- We removed „Jailbreaks“ and iPod touch
- 127 participants in final data set
Characteristics of data set

12. Findings

13. 5 concepts for arranging
Usage-based icon arrangement
Relatedness-based icon arrangement
Usability-based icon arrangement
Aesthetics-based icon arrangement
External concepts for icon arrangement
llll ll
llll
lll
ll
ll
ABC
123
...
=?

14. Example
„I try to checkerboard alternate colors [...] most icons are blue,
so on my first page of icons it alternates between blue and
brown and I try to keep that consistency“ (aesthetics-based)

15. Example
„I try to checkerboard alternate colors [...] most icons are blue,
so on my first page of icons it alternates between blue and
brown and I try to keep that consistency“ (aesthetics-based)

16. Co-occurrences of concepts
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
(1) usage-based
(2) relatedness-based
(3) usability based
(4) aesthetic-based
(5) external concepts
62 % 28 % 6 % 2 % 4 %
28 % 60 % 6 % 3 % 3 %
6 % 6 % 9 % 2 % 0 %
2 % 3 % 2 % 5 % 0 %
4 % 3 % 0 % 0 % 9 %
- Usage-based and relatedness-based most used
- Participants applied hybrid concepts

17. Impact of concept on layout
Numberofappiconson1stpage
2 0
1 5
1 0
5
0
Frequency
1 2 1 0 8 6 4 2 0
Numberofappiconson1stpage
2 0
1 5
1 0
5
0
Frequency
1 21 086420
Not usage based-concept Usage-based concept
More app icons on first
page when applying
usage-based concept
*iPhonedataonly
More folder icons on first
page when applying
relatedness-based concept
Numberoffoldericonson1stpage
1 4
1 2
1 0
8
6
4
2
0
Frequency
2 5 2 0 1 5 1 0 5 0
Numberoffoldericonson1stpage
1 4
1 2
1 0
8
6
4
2
0
Frequency
2 52 01 51 050
Relatedness-based conceptNot relatedness-based concept

18. Context-related folders
Locations
(e.g. cities, countries)
Activities
(e.g. shopping, watching
TV, traveling)

19. Grouping of apps into folders
People cluster follow-up apps
- Camera apps w/ photo editing apps
- Shopping apps w/ payment apps
People cluster similar apps
- Apps for sending text messages
- Dictionaries
- Music
- Games

20. Android specific results
WidgetIcon
Relativey-position
(0:bottom,1:top)
1,00
,80
,60
,40
,20
,00
WidgetIcon
Relativey-position
(0:bottom,1:top)
1,00
,80
,60
,40
,20
,00
WidgetIcon
Relativey-position
(0:bottom,1:top)
1,00
,80
,60
,40
,20
,00
WidgetIcon
Relativey-position
(0:bottom,1:top)
1,00
,80
,60
,40
,20
,00
WidgetIcon
Relativey-position
(0:bottom,1:top)
1,00
,80
,60
,40
,20
,00
Difference in icons and widgets
- People put app icons to bottom
- People put widgets to top

21. Other specific reasons
- Have as few pages as possible for less browsing
- One user tries to „put games in the back and
work apps to front, because it‘s a work iPhone“
- Users have dedicated places for unused apps
- For apps that „are never used but might come
in handy some day“
- „Land of misfit apps“
- „Silly apps“

22. Discussion + Implications

23. Discussion
- Better support for icon arrangement required
- Context-aware menus should use level of pages
- Locations of app icons can be exploited
to infer information about applications

24. Model for design of launchers
- General model for the design of launcher menus:
three zones that should fit to all users
most used apps
clusters of
related apps
„land of
misfit apps“

25. Conclusion

26. - Study about icon arrangement on smartphones
- Five concepts (most users apply concepts
based on usage frequency and app relatedness)
- Implications for the design of launcher menus
(support, context awareness, common model)
- Data is available (see paper for URL)
Conclusion
ABC
123
...
=?llll ll
llll
lll
ll
ll

27. ABC
123
...
=?
llll ll
llll
lll
ll
ll
A Study on Icon Arrangement
by Smartphone Users
Matthias Böhmer
matthias.boehmer@dfki.de
http://bit.ly/iconstudy
Five concepts (most users sort icons based
on usage frequency and app relatedness)
Implications for the design of launcher menus
(support, context awareness, common model)

28. Thank you!
Computer from The Noun Project
Smartphone designed by James Fenton from The Noun Project
Sergi Delgado, from The Noun Project
Tyler Sall, from The Noun Project
Marcio Duarte, from The Noun Project
Location designed by John Caserta from The Noun Project