Cogprints

Target Acquisition in Multiscale Electronic Worlds

Guiard, Yves and Beaudouin-Lafon, Michel (2004) Target Acquisition in Multiscale Electronic Worlds. [Journal (Paginated)]

Full text available as:

[img]
Preview
 PDF
414Kb

Abstract

Since the advent of graphical user interfaces, electronic information has grown exponentially, whereas the size of screen displays has stayed almost the same. Multiscale interfaces were designed to address this mismatch, allowing users to adjust the scale at which they interact with information objects. Although the technology has progressed quickly, the theory has lagged behind. Multiscale interfaces pose a stimulating theoretical challenge, reformulating the classic target-acquisition problem from the physical world into an infinitely rescalable electronic world. We address this challenge by extending Fitts’ original pointing paradigm: we introduce the scale variable, thus defining a multiscale pointing paradigm. This article reports on our theoretical and empirical results. We show that target-acquisition performance in a zooming interface must obey Fitts’ law, and more specifically, that target-acquisition time must be proportional to the index of difficulty. Moreover, we complement Fitts’ law by accounting for the effect of view size on pointing performance, showing that performance bandwidth is proportional to view size, up to a ceiling effect. The first empirical study shows that Fitts’ law does apply to a zoomable interface for indices of difficulty up to and beyond 30 bits, whereas classical Fitts’ law studies have been confined in the 2-10 bit range. The second study demonstrates a strong interaction between view size and task difficulty for multiscale pointing, and shows a surprisingly low ceiling. We conclude with implications of these findings for the design of multiscale user interfaces.

Item Type:Journal (Paginated)
Keywords:Human-computer interaction. Multi-scale electronic document navigation. Zooming interfaces. Target acquisition. Human aimed movement. Fitts’ law.
Subjects:Computer Science > Human Computer Interaction
ID Code:4338
Deposited By: Guiard, Dr Yves
Deposited On:02 May 2005
Last Modified:11 Mar 2011 08:56

References in Article

Select the SEEK icon to attempt to find the referenced article. If it does not appear to be in cogprints you will be forwarded to the paracite service. Poorly formated references will probably not work.

Accot, J., Zhai, S., 1997. Beyond Fitts' law: Models for trajectory-based HCI tasks. Proceedings of ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 97, Atlanta, Georgia). ACM Press, New York, pp. 295-302. Accot, J., Zhai, S., 2001. Scale effects in steering law tasks. Proceedings of ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2001, Seattle, Washington). ACM Press, New York, pp. 1-8. Apperley, M., Spence, I. T. R., 1982. A bifocal display technique for data presentation. In Proceedings of Eurographics, pp. 27-43. Balakrishnan, R., this issue. "Beating" Fitts' law: Virtual enhancements for pointing facilitation. Baudisch, P., Good, N., Bellotti, V., Schraedley, P., 2002. Keeping things in context: a comparative evaluation of focus plus context screens, overviews, and zooming. Proceedings of ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota). ACM Press, New York, pp. 259-266 Beaudouin-Lafon, M., 2004. Designing Interaction, not Interfaces. Proceedings of Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI’04, Gallipoli, Italy). ACM Press, New York, pp. 15-22. Bederson, B.B., Hollan, J.D., 1994. PAD++: A Zooming graphical interface for exploring alternate interface physics. Proceedings of ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 94, Marina Del Ray, California). ACM Press, New York, pp. 17-26. Bederson, B.B., Meyer, J., Good , L., 2000. Jazz: an extensible zoomable user interface graphics toolkit in Java. Proceedings of ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2000, San Diego, California). ACM Press, New York, pp. 171-180. Card, S. K., English, W. K., Burr, B. J., 1978. Evaluation of mouse, rate controlled isometric joystick, step keys and text keys for text selection on a CRT. Ergonomics 21, 601-613. Card, S. K., Hong, L., Mackinlay, J. D., Chi, E. H., 2004. 3Book: a 3D electronic smart book. Proceedings of Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI’04, Gallipoli, Italy). ACM Press, New York, pp. 303-307. Carpendale M.S.T., Montagnese, C., 2001. A framework for unifying presentation space. Proceedings of ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2001, Orlando, Florida). ACM Press, New York, pp. 61-70. Crossman, E. R. F. W. (1960). The information-capacity of the human motor-system in pursuit tracking. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 12, 1-16. Fitts, P. M., 1954. The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement. Journal of Experimental Psychology 47, 381-391 (reprinted in J. Exp. Psychol.: General, September 1992, 121(3), 262-269). Furnas, G.W., Bederson, B.B., 1995. Space-scale diagrams: Understanding multiscale interfaces. Proceedings of ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 95, Denver, Colorado). ACM Press, New York, pp. 234-241. Furnas, G., W, 1986. Generalized fisheye views. Proceedings of ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 86, Boston, Massachusetts). ACM Press, New York, pp. 16-23. Gonzalez, D., Casalta, D., Mottet, D., Guiard, Y., in press. Le Pointage bi-échelle : Evaluation de quatre variantes d’interfaces graphiques utilisateur. Le Travail Humain. Guiard, Y., 2001. Disentangling relative from absolute movement amplitude in Fitts’ law experiments. Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2001, Seattle, Washington). ACM Press, New York, pp. 315-316. Guiard, Y., Beaudouin-Lafon, M., Bastin, J., Pasveer, D., Zhai, S., 2004. View size and pointing difficulty in multiscale navigation. Proceedings of Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI’04, Gallipoli, Italy). ACM Press, New York, pp. 117-124. Guiard, Y., Bourgeois, F., Mottet, D., Beaudouin-Lafon, M., 2001. Beyond the 10-bit barrier : Fitts’ law in multiscale electronic worlds. Proceedings of IHM-HCI 2001. In: Blandford, A., Vanderdonckt, J., Gray, P. (Eds.), People and Computers XV - Interactions without frontiers. Springer, London, pp. 573-587. Guiard, Y., Beaudouin-Lafon, M., Mottet, D. (1999). Navigation as multiscale pointing : extending Fitts’ model to very high precision tasks. Proceedings of ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 99, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). ACM Press, New York, pp. 450-457. Gutwin, C., 2002. Focus Targeting in Interactive Fisheye Views. Proceedings of ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2000, Minneapolis, Minnesota). ACM Press, New York, pp. 267-274. Hascoët, M. (2003). Throwing models for large displays. Proceedings of 17th Annual Human-Computer Interaction Conference (HCI’2003, Bath, UK), Designing for Society, Vol. 2, pp. 73-77. Hornbæk, K., Frøkjær, E., 2001. Reading of electronic documents: the usability of linear, fisheye and overview+details interfaces. Proceedings of ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2001, Seattle, Washington). ACM Press, New York, pp. 293-300. Jul, S., Furnas, G. W., 1998. Critical zones in desert fog: Aids to multiscale navigation. Proceedings of ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 98, San Francisco, California). ACM Press, New York, pp. 97-106. Kabbash, P., Buxton, W., 1995. The "Prince" technique: Fitts’ law and selection using area cursors. Proceedings of ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 95, Denver, Colorado). ACM Press, New York, pp. 273-279. Kelso, J. A., 1992. Theoretical concepts and strategies for understanding perceptual-motor skill: From information capacity in closed systems to self-organization in open, nonequilibrium systems. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 121, 260-261. Leung, Y.K., Apperley, M.D., 1994. A review and taxonomy of distortion-oriented presentation techniques. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 1(2),126-160. Lewis, M., Jacobson, J., 2002. Game engines in scientific research: Introduction. Communications of the ACM 45 (1), Jan. 2002, 27-31. MacKenzie, I. S., 1992. Fitts' law as a research and design tool in human-computer interaction. Human-Computer Interaction 7, 91-139. Mottet, D., Guiard, Y., Bootsma, R. J.,Ferrand, T., 2001. Two-handed performance of a rhythmical Fitts task by individuals and dyads. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26, 1275-1286. Negroponte, N., 1995. Being digital. Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York. Perlin, K., Fox, D., 1993. Pad: An alternative approach to the computer interface. Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH (SIGGRAPH 93, Anaheim, California). ACM Press, New York, pp. 57-64. Plamondon, R., & Alimi, A. M. (1997). Speed/accuracy trade-offs in target-directed movements. Behavioural and Brain Sciences 20, 279-349. Soukoreff, R.W., MacKenzie, I.S., this issue. Towards a standard for pointing device evaluation – Perspectives on 27 years of Fitts' law research in HCI. Ware, C., Lewis M. S., 1995. The DragMag image magnifier. Proceedings of ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 95, Denver, Colorado). ACM Press, New York, pp. 407-408. Zhai, S., this issue. Characterizing computer input with Fitts’ law parameters — The information and non-information aspects of pointing.

Metadata

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Cogprints is powered by EPrints 3 which is developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. More information and software credits.