The effect of reducing homing time on the speed of a finger-controlled isometric pointing device

This paper describes a study of a new pointing device. Subjects’ performance with two pointing devices was compared in two tasks. One task required pointing, the other both pointing and typing. One group used the standard keyboard and mouse combination. The other group used a keyboard with a joystick under the ‘J’ key. The mouse was faster for both tasks in spite of the reduction in homing time shown by the joystick and keyboard combination. The experiment shows that the mouse is the faster pointing device, and that a finger controlled device complies with Fitts’ law. In addition, we show that efforts to design faster pointing devices should focus on increasing the Fitts’ law Index of Performance rather than on reducing the homing time.