Analysis of Performance Resulting from the Design of Selected Hand-Held Input Control Devices and Visual Displays

Abstract

Since the introduction of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), input control devices have become an integral part of desktop computing. When interfacing with GUIs, these input control devices have become the human's primary means of communicating with the computer. Although there have been a number experiments conducted on pointing devices for desktop machine, there is little research on pointing devices for wearable computer technology. This is surprising because pointing devices are a major component of a wearable computer system, allowing the wearer to select and manipulate objects on the screen. The design of these pointing devices will have a major impact on the ease with which the operator can interact with information being displayed (Card, English, & Burr, 1978). As a result, this research is the first in a series to investigate design considerations for pointing devices and visual displays that will support wearable computer users. Twenty soldiers participated in an experiment using target acquisition software with five pointing devices and two visual displays. The findings of the research strongly support the use of a relative modepointing device with rotational characteristics (i.e., trackball or thumbwheel) over other designs. Furthermore, the results also suggest that there is little difference between pointing devices operated with the thumb and index finger for target acquisition tasks. This study has also showed that there were few differences in pointing and homing time for pointing devices across the two visual displays. Finally, the study demonstrated that the Fitts law model could be applied to hand-operated pointing devices for wearable computers. This is important because it allows the future development of pointing devices to be compared with the devices tested in this research using the Fitts Law Index of Performance calculations.

Effects of Chemical Protective Clothing on Task Performance Using Wearable Input Devices

“…If differences were significant, the D-C gain setting that produced the fewest errors was chosen as the optimum gain setting. Otherwise, the D-C gain setting that produced the fastest task completion time was selected (consistent with procedures used in Spencer, 2000). If different D-C gain level produced fastest speed and fewest errors.…”

“…Indirect control input devices can be used with a helmet mounted display (HMD) or a wrist-mounted display (WMD), however direct input control devices can only be used with WMDs. Since an HMD will be used in the proposed research, only indirect control devices will be included (Spencer, 2000).…”

“…The goal of the display-control (D-C) gain experiment was to determine the optimum gain setting for the mouse and touch pad input devices, so that an accurate analysis of input device performance could be made. D-C gain controls the velocity of the display cursor (Spencer, 2000), such that very high gain settings result in faster initial movements but fine positioning of the cursor is more difficult (Douglas & Mithal, 1997). Findings from previous studies on the effects of D-C gain on input device performance are inconsistent (Epps, 1986;Buck, 1980).…”

Effects of chemical protective clothing on task performance using wearable input devices

“…If differences were significant, the D-C gain setting that produced the fewest errors was chosen as the optimum gain setting. Otherwise, the D-C gain setting that produced the fastest task completion time was selected (consistent with procedures used in Spencer, 2000). D-C gain setting optimum for that device.…”

An Analysis of Game Controller and Touchscreen Devices for Input into a Complex High-Information Display

“…Another study by Kanceler & Schopper (1993) determined that a combination of pointing and alphanumeric-capable devices provided the best increase in performance when spatial and text input tasks were performed. Finally, a study by Spencer (2002) found that pointing devices with rotational characteristics (e.g., a trackball) are optimal for target acquisition tasks. Each of these studies indicates that the use of alternative input devices can increase efficiency, but this effect is often task-specific.…”