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Target Acquisition in Multiscale Electronic Worlds

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

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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

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