Kinematic Analysis of Cursor Trajectories Controlled With a Touchpad

Abstract

To investigate the characteristics of a computer touchpad as a pointing device, 14 participants used their right hand to manipulate the touchpad on a laptop computer. They were required to move a cursor over different distances (7.5 cm, 15 cm) from a home location to targets of different diameters (8 mm, 16 mm), situated to the upper left, middle, or right of a computer screen. A kinematic analysis of movement onsets and cursor trajectories indicated the nature of inefficiencies of the touchpad compared with other devices, primarily excessive submovements. Upper leftward movements were poorer, which can be explained by asymmetries in the finger-wrist system. This result implies that screen accessibility can vary as a function of users' interaction with cursor controllers and that the default placements of key icons might need to vary as a consequence.

Analyzing spatial data from mouse tracker methodology: An entropic approach

“…Consequently, eventual competition/curvature of the trajectories could result in artifacts arising from the lack of precision of the hand. Indeed, as is known, larger movement amplitudes are usually required by low mouse gain whereas a higher precision is instead needed with high mouse gain (Dillen et al, 2005). Other factors such as cues direction, inter-distances among cues, size/width of the screen should be carefully checked since they may affect the quality of computer-mouse recordings (Phillips & Triggs, 2001).…”

Cursor type and response conflict in graphical user interfaces

“…Nevertheless the implementation of such interventions may need to be device specific, as cursor trajectories vary in their predictability as a function of controller (Dillen et al, 2005). Perhaps the increasing proliferation of more direct interfaces such as touch sensitive screens (Baber, 1997) may eliminate such effects.…”

A kinematic analysis of directional effects on mouse control

“…However, the time-varying characteristics of the cursor trajectory can be revealed by analysing the kinematic variables of the trajectory. The results of such study may provide an understanding of the factors limiting cursor placement (Phillips, Meehan, and Triggs 2003) and indicate what role planning cursor movements, creating terminal guidance, resolving mismatches between display and control coordinate systems, moving cursors across the screen or gauging screen distances (Dillen, Phillips, and Meehan 2005) might play in the problem.…”

“…The angle of approach has been reported to have a significant effect on the performance of a pointing device. However, it is not clear how this factor influences cursor movement on the computer screen (Dillen, Phillips, and Meehan 2005). Instead, different interpretations of the hidden principles of operation related to this directional effect have been proposed.…”

“…Instead, different interpretations of the hidden principles of operation related to this directional effect have been proposed. Generally, these interpretations were associated with the concept of compatibility (Phillips, Triggs, and Meehan 2005), biomechanical factors of the upper extremities (Dillen, Phillips, and Meehan 2005;Hertzum and Hornbaek 2010;Smyrnis et al 2000), efforts stemming from coordinate transformation (Phillips and Triggs 2000;Phillips, Triggs, and Meehan 2001), the reading screen direction (Donker and Reitsma, 2007b) and functional cerebral asymmetries Early studies (Phillips and Triggs 2000;Emurian 1996, 1999) investigated the directional effects with the classic measures originating from the framework of Fitts' law. But as completion time and error rate are classic measures and do not reveal any time-varying characteristics of the cursor trajectory, interpretations of the results of early studies are limited.…”