A Comparison of Pressure and Tilt Input Techniques for Cursor Control

Abstract

SUMMARYThree experiments were conducted in this study to investigate the human ability to control pen pressure and pen tilt input, by coupling this control with cursor position, angle and scale. Comparisons between pen pressure input and pen tilt input have been made in the three experiments. Experimental results show that decreasing pressure input resulted in very poor performance and was not a good input technique for any of the three experiments. In "Experiment 1-Coupling to Cursor Position", the tilt input technique performed relatively better than the increasing pressure input technique in terms of time, even though the tilt technique had a slightly higher error rate. In "Experiment 2-Coupling to Cursor Angle", the tilt input performed a little better than the increasing pressure input in terms of time, but the gap between them is not so apparent as Experiment 1. In "Experiment 3-Coupling to Cursor Scale", tilt input performed a little better than increasing pressure input in terms of adjustment time. Based on the results of our experiments, we have inferred several design implications and guidelines. key words: pressure input, tilt input, target selection tasks, pen-based interfaces

Acquiring and pointing

“…Tian and colleagues [32,33] showed that using pen tilt information could improve the stimulus-response compatibility and their "Tilt Cursor" utilized pen tilt to extend selection capability. Futhermore, Zhou and Ren [36] showed that tilt input performed relatively better than pressure input for cursor control. Bridson [4] used both translation and tilt of a pen to control viewpoint in a 3D scene, treating the pen as a handle attached to a selected point on the surface.…”

“…According to the aforementioned previous works, current pen-tilt-based interaction techniques can be classified into two types: (1) Tilt acquiring: users adjust the pen to a designate tilt angle either before or after placing the pen tip on the surface (e.g., using pen tilt to control the cursor [36] or to choose a pen mode once the pen tip contacts the tablet), and (2) Tilt pointing: users tilt the pen from one angle to another only after the pen tip is in contract with the surface (e.g., "tilt menu" [33], controlling a virtual human figure [21], 3D navigation [4,31]). Based on the study results, we discuss the implications for designing pen-tilt-based user interfaces.…”

The Influence of Flexural Stiffness on the Performance and Preference of Bendable Stylus Interfaces

“…Zhou et al conducted a comparison study between the performances of pressure and tilt input when coupled to cursor position, angle, and scale [64]. For their first study, they mapped pressure and tilt control to control the position of a cursor that moved in a linear direction.…”

“…Ramos et al found that humans can only distinguish up to 6 levels of pressure [45]. Research has also found that it was difficult for users to perform tasks that required a decrease in pressure level as it compromised completion time or accuracy [64]. Therefore, within our second study we included a task that focused on measuring the performance of changing (increasing and decreasing) bend and pressure input during linear movement.…”

“…While these inputs can be of great benefit to stylus-based applications, there are still some limitations posed to each. For example, pen pressure input can be difficult to control while decreasing in pressure opposed to increasing in pressure [46,64].…”