Predicting the visual demand of finger-touch pointing tasks in a driving context

Finger-touch based interactions with capacitive touchscreen devices in cars are becoming increasingly common. As such, it is critical to understand the basic human factors of target acquisition (pointing/touching) in this context. We describe a simulator study that aims to build Fitts' Law relationships for predicting the visual demands (mean glance duration and total glance time) associated with finger-touch pointing tasks as a function of target size, location and design. The observed data show strong linear relationships between all visual demand measures and Fitts' index of difficulty, indicating that finger-touch pointing tasks conform well with the Fitts' Law model under conditions of divided attention. The derived equations are discussed in the context of designing in-vehicle touchscreen interfaces for minimal visual demand.

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