A Human Motor Behavior Model for Direct Pointing at a Distance

Models of human motor behavior are well known as an aid in the design of user interfaces (UIs). Most current models apply primarily to desktop interaction, but with the development of non-desktop UIs, new types of motor behaviors need to be modeled. Direct Pointing at a Distance is such a motor behavior. A model of direct pointing at a distance would be particularly useful in the comparison of different interaction techniques, because the performance of such techniques is highly dependent on user strategy, making controlled studies difficult to perform. Inspired by Fitts’ law, we studied four possible models and concluded that movement time for a direct pointing task is best described as a function of the angular amplitude of movement and the angular size of the target. Contrary to Fitts’ law, our model shows that the angular size has a much larger effect on movement time than the angular amplitude and that the growth in the difficulty of the tasks is quadratic, rather then linear. We estimated the model’s parameters experimentally with a correlation coefficient of 96%.

[1]  Allen Newell,et al.  The Prospects for Psychological Science in Human-Computer Interaction , 1985, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[2]  Shumin Zhai,et al.  Performance evaluation of input devices in trajectory-based tasks: an application of the steering law , 1999, CHI '99.

[3]  Doug A. Bowman,et al.  Novel Uses of Pinch Gloves™ for Virtual Environment Interaction Techniques , 2002, Virtual Reality.

[4]  Shumin Zhai,et al.  Beyond Fitts' law: models for trajectory-based HCI tasks , 1997, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[5]  G. V. Kondraske,et al.  An angular motion Fitt's Law for human performance modeling and prediction , 1994, Proceedings of 16th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[6]  Krishna Bharat,et al.  Making computers easier for older adults to use: area cursors and sticky icons , 1997, CHI.

[7]  Saul Greenberg,et al.  Speech-filtered bubble ray: improving target acquisition on display walls , 2007, ICMI '07.

[8]  Shumin Zhai,et al.  Refining Fitts' law models for bivariate pointing , 2003, CHI '03.

[9]  Gregory D. Abowd,et al.  A 2-Way Laser-Assisted Selection Scheme for Handhelds in a Physical Environment , 2003, UbiComp.

[10]  Daniel Vogel,et al.  Distant freehand pointing and clicking on very large, high resolution displays , 2005, UIST.

[11]  A. Murata,et al.  Extending Fitts' law to a three-dimensional pointing task. , 2001, Human movement science.

[12]  Chris North,et al.  A multiscale interaction technique for large, high-resolution displays , 2009, 2009 IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces.

[13]  J Dankelman,et al.  Equipment control in a sterile environment using the Gyromouse and a new interface, the user interface (UI) wand , 2007, Minimally invasive therapy & allied technologies : MITAT : official journal of the Society for Minimally Invasive Therapy.

[14]  Ravin Balakrishnan,et al.  Acquisition of expanding targets , 2002, CHI.

[15]  Sang Joon Kim,et al.  A Mathematical Theory of Communication , 2006 .

[16]  Renaud Blanch,et al.  Object Pointing: A Complement to Bitmap Pointing in GUIs , 2004, Graphics Interface.

[17]  P. Fitts.  The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement. , 1954, Journal of experimental psychology.

[18]  Doug A. Bowman,et al.  Increasing the Precision of Distant Pointing for Large High-Resolution Displays , 2008 .

[19]  Tovi Grossman,et al.  Pointing at trivariate targets in 3D environments , 2004, CHI.

[20]  Dan R. Olsen,et al.  Laser pointer interaction , 2001, CHI.

[21]  Robert Sessions Woodworth,et al.  THE ACCURACY OF VOLUNTARY MOVEMENT , 1899 .

[22]  Chadwick A. Wingrave,et al.  Baseline Factors for Raycasting Selection , 2005 .

[23]  I. Scott MacKenzie,et al.  Fitts' Law as a Research and Design Tool in Human-Computer Interaction , 1992, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[24]  Abhishek Ranjan,et al.  Interacting with large displays from a distance with vision-tracked multi-finger gestural input , 2005, SIGGRAPH '06.

[25]  I. Scott MacKenzie,et al.  Extending Fitts' law to two-dimensional tasks , 1992, CHI.

[26]  Daniel Vogel,et al.  HybridPointing: fluid switching between absolute and relative pointing with a direct input device , 2006, UIST.

[27]  Sergey V. Matveyev,et al.  The optical tweezers: multiple-point interaction technique , 2003, VRST '03.

[28]  Hao Jiang,et al.  Direct pointer: direct manipulation for large-display interaction using handheld cameras , 2006, CHI.

[29]  Jeffrey Nichols,et al.  Interacting at a distance: measuring the performance of laser pointers and other devices , 2002, CHI.

[30]  Ravin Balakrishnan,et al.  Pointing lenses: facilitating stylus input through visual-and motor-space magnification , 2007, CHI.

[31]  Tovi Grossman,et al.  A probabilistic approach to modeling two-dimensional pointing , 2005, TCHI.

[32]  Ivan Poupyrev,et al.  3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice , 2004 .

[33]  Tovi Grossman,et al.  The bubble cursor: enhancing target acquisition by dynamic resizing of the cursor's activation area , 2005, CHI.

[34]  Lei Liu,et al.  Comparing Aimed Movements in the Real World and in Virtual Reality , 2009, 2009 IEEE Virtual Reality Conference.

[35]  Paul A. Beardsley,et al.  Zoom-and-pick: facilitating visual zooming and precision pointing with interactive handheld projectors , 2005, UIST.