Design and comparison of acceleration methods for touchpad

ABSTRACT

As the resolution of a notebook display increases, the efficiency of a touchpad is becoming a more important issue. In particular, it is often observed that users scrape the pad repeatedly to reach the close button of a window. In this paper, we propose two new cursor control methods utilizing the contact-area information that is provided by most touchpads. We compared the new methods with the mouse acceleration that is the most common cursor control method. An evaluation study showed that the new methods required smaller number of scrapings and shorter distance of scraping on the touchpad while their efficiency is similar to that of the mouse acceleration. All participants preferred the new methods to the mouse acceleration.

REFERENCES

• 1: Ball R., Szwedo M., and North C. Dynamic Size and Speed Cursor for Large, High-Resolution Displays. Technical Report TR-06-16, Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. http://infovis.cs.vt.edu/gigapixel/publications/dssmouse.pdf
• 2: Sarah A. Douglas , Arthur E. Kirkpatrick , I. Scott MacKenzie, Testing pointing device performance and user assessment with the ISO 9241, Part 9 standard, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.215-222, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.303042]
• 3: Hart, S. and Staveland, L. Development of NASATLS (Task Load Index): Results of empirical and theoretical research. In Human mental workload, Hancock, P. & Meshkati, N. (Ed), North--Holland: Elsevier (1988), 139--183.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Input devices and strategies (e.g., mouse, touchscreen)

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
cursor control, large display, touchpad