Card, English, and Burr (1978): 25 years later

ABSTRACT

We revisit the Fitts? law model published 25 years ago by Card, English, and Burr. Their research was important because it was the first comparative evaluation of the mouse, and also the first use of Fitts? law in HCI. For the mouse, they reported MT = 1.03 + 0.096 ID, with throughput reported as the slope reciprocal: TP = 1 / 0.96 = 10.3 bps. We re-analyse their data in view of ISO9241-9, the new standard for evaluating pointing devices. The reanalysis yields a throughput of 2.65 bps, or 4.32 bps including a nominal adjustment for the time for the hand to adjust its grip on the mouse. These values are closer to recently published ISO-conforming values for the mouse.

REFERENCES

• 1: Card, S. K., English, W. K., and Burr, B. J. Evaluation of mouse, rate-controlled isometric joystick, step keys, and text keys for text selection on a CRT, Ergonomics 21 (1978), 601--613.
• 2: Fitts, P. M. The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement, Journal of Experimental Psychology 47 (1954), 381--391.
• 3: ISO/TC 159/SC4/WG3 N147: Ergonomic requirements for office work with VDTs - Part 9 - Requirements for non-keyboard input devices (ISO 9241-9), October 1999.
• 4: Isokoski, P. & Raisamo, R. Speed-accuracy measures in a population of six mice, Proceedings of APCHI 2002, Bejing, China: Science Press (2002), 765--777.
• 5: MacKenzie, I. S. Fitts' law as a research and design tool in human-computer interaction, Human-Computer Interaction 7 (1992), 91--139.
• 6: I. Scott MacKenzie , William Buxton, Extending Fitts' law to two-dimensional tasks, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.219-226, May 03-07, 1992, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/142750.142794]
• 7: MacKenzie, I. S., Zhang, S. X., and Soukoreff, R. W. Text entry using soft keyboards, Behaviour & Information Technology 18 (1999), 235--244.
• 8: Newell, A., and Card, S. K. The prospects for psychological science in human-computer interaction, Human-Computer Interaction 1 (1985), 209--242.

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: Evaluation/methodology

Additional 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: Theory and methods; Standardization; Input devices and strategies (e.g., mouse, touchscreen)

Keywords:
Fitts' law, ISO9241-9, pointing devices, throughput