© 2003 Stanford University IT&SOCIETY , VOLUME 1, ISSUE 3, WINTER 2003, PP. 90-101 http://www.ITandSociety.org THE IMPACT OF MIGRATION OF DATA TO S MALL SCREENS ON NAVIGATION BONNIE MACKAY CAROLYN WATTERS ABSTRACT The increased use and growing popularity of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) means users now have access to information on a variety of platforms. As people move or migrate between devices, from their desktops, to their laptops and to their PDAs, there is a need to maintain the integrity and context of information designed for the large screen when displayed on the small screen. Four common approaches to migration are outlined: direct migration, data modification, data suppression and data overview. For each approach, the potential impact on subsequent navigation of a web page is examined with different data types performing both simple tasks of browsing and reading and complex tasks of comparison using small screen devices. Based on this analysis, a chart compares navigation for different migration techniques and web tasks. The chart can be used to guide the migration of information from the large screen to the small screen and optimize navigation for specific tasks. _____________________ Bonnie MacKay is a PhD. candidate at the Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. bmackay@cs.dal.ca . Carolyn Watters is a professor at the Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. watters@cs.dal.ca .