Eye Gaze and Mouse Combined Target Selection Methods for General GUIs

The purpose of this paper is to increase the efficiency of pointing operation — an operation that moves and points a mouse cursor onto a target item. We examined three pointing methods (Auto method, Manual method, and SemiAuto method) underthe gener al GUI environment. By using the three examined methods, the computer user can select a target even if jittery motions of user’s eye and the measurement error of an eye-tracking device occurred. (1) Auto method enlarges the target virtually. (2) Manual method switches the input device from the eye to the mouse after the user roughly pointed the target. (3) SemiAuto method is a method that combined Auto method and Manual method. The result of an experiment to evaluate three methods showed that the efficiency of operation with SemiAuto method is same as or faster than the mouse only operation without increasing errors largely. Especially, in the discontinuous selection situation (a target selection whose cursor position is unpredictable), SemiAuto method needed only about 2/3 of time of the mouse only operation.