Is Walking Bad for Tablet Use or is Tablet Use Bad for Walking? An Experimental Study on the Effect of Walking on Tablet Use.

In this study the impact of users' mobility on tablet use was investigated in terms of performance, mental workload, and user experience. The study was conducted on a 7″ tablet computer, where participants executed specific tasks on the tablet. Participants performed this experiment twice, once in a seated position and once while walking through an indoor obstacle course. Total task performance time, walking speed, and walking distance were measured. Two questionnaires were used in this experiment: the NASA-TLX, for the evaluation of mental workload, and the AttrakDiff2, for user experience evaluation. Results show that tablet task performance significantly worsened and subjective mental workload increased in the walking condition, relative to the seated condition.