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Variability of throughput in pointing device tests: button-up or button-down?

Published: 14 October 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Object selection and activation in graphical user interfaces is usually connected to the changes in the state of the buttons on the mouse. In input device testing the position of the mouse cursor at the time of button-down or button-up events is used. We measured the effect the choice of event has on throughput in a standard Fitts' paradigm pointing device test. 12 participants used two mice with button-down and button-up events as the target selection trigger. Button-down events produced 0.2 bps higher throughput than button-up events. Because of this, it is important to choose the relevant event to be used in pointing device tests and to report the choice along with the results. Otherwise results may be misleading and inter-study comparisons of throughput values may be inaccurate.

References

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Fitts, P. M., The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47 (1954), 381--391.
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MacKenzie, I. S., A note on the information-theoretic basis for Fitts' law, Journal of Motor Behavior, 21 (1989), 323--330.
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MacKenzie, I. S., and Jusoh, S., An evaluation of two input devices for remote pointing. Proc. of the Eighth IFIP Working Conference on Engineering for Human-Computer Interaction - EHCI 2001. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer-Verlag (2001), 235--249.
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Soukoreff, R. W., and MacKenzie, I. S., Towards a standard for pointing device evaluation: Perspectives on 27 years of Fitts' law research in HCI. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 61, 6 (2004), 751--789.
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  1. Variability of throughput in pointing device tests: button-up or button-down?

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    NordiCHI '06: Proceedings of the 4th Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction: changing roles
    October 2006
    517 pages
    ISBN:1595933255
    DOI:10.1145/1182475
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 14 October 2006

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    Author Tags

    1. Fitts' law
    2. button-down
    3. button-up
    4. pointing device
    5. throughput

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    • (2023)Fitts’ Throughput Vs Empirical Throughput: A Comparative StudyHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 202310.1007/978-3-031-42280-5_28(436-455)Online publication date: 25-Aug-2023
    • (2016)Advanced modeling of selection and steering dataInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2016.03.00994:C(35-52)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
    • (2015)BlowClickProceedings of the 3rd ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/2788940.2788953(20-23)Online publication date: 8-Aug-2015
    • (2015)Back-Pointer — Fitts' law analysis of natural mobile camera based interactions2015 IEEE Games Entertainment Media Conference (GEM)10.1109/GEM.2015.7377208(1-6)Online publication date: Oct-2015
    • (2015)Usability of Touchpad Based Game Controller InterfacesProceedings, Part II, of the 4th International Conference on Design, User Experience, and Usability: Users and Interactions - Volume 918710.1007/978-3-319-20898-5_44(452-463)Online publication date: 2-Aug-2015
    • (2009)ISO 9241-9 evaluation of video game controllersProceedings of Graphics Interface 200910.5555/1555880.1555930(223-230)Online publication date: 25-May-2009
    • (2009)An empirical comparison of "wiimote" gun attachments for pointing tasksProceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI symposium on Engineering interactive computing systems10.1145/1570433.1570471(203-208)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2009

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