Deconstructing the touch experience

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate the performance and experience differences between direct touch and mouse input on horizontal and vertical surfaces using a simple application and several validated scales. We find that, not only are both speed and accuracy improved when using the multi-touch display over a mouse, but that participants were happier and more engaged. They also felt more competent, in control, related to other people, and immersed. Surprisingly, these results cannot be explained by the intuitiveness of the controller, and the benefits of touch did not come at the expense of perceived workload. Our work shows the added value of considering experience in addition to traditional measures of performance, and demonstrates an effective and efficient method for gathering experience during interaction with surface applications. We conclude by discussing how an understanding of this experience can help in designing touch applications.

Measuring Readiness-to-Hand through Differences in Attention to the Task vs. Attention to the Tool

“…There was a significant interaction between tool type and difficulty ( 1,28 = 144.0, < .001, 2 = .84). Post-hoc analyses revealed pairwise significant differences between number of tasks for easy and hard conditions for both tool types ( < .05); inspection (Figure 8) reveals that the difference was smaller for the virtual tool (18) than the physical one (42). This interaction also suggests that performance was better in the physical condition (H4).…”

“…In these studies, users are shown an interaction, and then asked to select gestures to perform that task in an attempt to discover what is most natural or intuitive. Other studies have considered affect, task load, and motivation when using touch and tactile interaction [42]. This methodology uses validated scales to measure the experience of using an interactive system.…”

Hybrid Tactile/Tangible Interaction for 3D Data Exploration

“…Yet, they are quite different from each other: tactile input benefits from its directness and a resulting perception of control and precision of interaction [81,87], while tangible input offers an integrated, multi-sensory, and intuitive 6 DOF control due to its similarity to day-to-day interaction with real objects [17,33,48]. The development of portable position-aware devices offers opportunities to use a tablet for tangible input in addition to the usual tactile input.…”

Handpad: a virtual mouse for controlling laptops in a smart home

“…There are some benefits to using a touch screen instead of a mouse, but these benefits are slight [13][14][15]. Findlater et al [13] compared a classical mouse and touch screen for the four operations stated above, finding that the touch screen outperformed the mouse by only 16% on average for younger adults (19-51 years old, M = 27.7, SD = 8.9) and by 35% for older adults (61-86 years old, M = 74.3, SD = 6.6).…”

“…In addition to pointing efficiency, Leftheriotis and Chorianopoulos [14] noted that users rated touch screen input twice as highly as mouse input in terms of preference, speed, and entertainment. In the games industry, Watson et al [15] showed that touch screen input outperformed mouse input in a 2D shooting game for both vertical and horizontal surfaces.…”