Extended Fitts' Law for Dual Task : Pointing on IVIS during Simulated Driving

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify a relationship between the time taken and the characteristics of touch key for touch-screen-based in-vehicle information system (IVIS) and to suggest a new Fitts' law formula that is added a driving speed parameter. Many studies already have shown that Fitts' law is well fitted in various devices for primary tasks, but there is no study of Fitts' law for secondary task in dual-task situation. Fitts' law may not be applied to the secondary task as it is, because the secondary task performance can be affected by the amount of attention for the primary task. To verify this, we carried out an experiment that showed whether pointing task to touch-screen-based IVIS during driving is affected by driving speeds or not. In the experiment, 30 people were volunteered for participants and the participants carried out driving task and pointing task on the screen of IVIS simultaneously. We measured the time to point a touch key on IVIS for every condition (3 driving speeds×5 touch key sizes×7 distances between steering wheel and touch key). As a result, there was an effect of driving speed on the pointing time. As we extended the index of difficulty of the conventional Fitts' law formula by incorporating driving speed, we established an extended Fitts' law formula for pointing on IVIS, which showed better accordance with dual task situation. This study can be evidence that secondary task performance is affected by degree of concentration on primary task, and the extended Fitts' law formula can be useful to design interfaces of IVIS. †