Juan Pablo Hourcade
Keith B. Perry
ABSTRACT
Children's difficulty in point-and-click tasks using indirect pointing devices such as the mouse has been documented in several studies. This difficulty is manifested in a lack of control near the target, which often results in children clicking inaccurately. This paper presents and evaluates PointAssist, a tool that helps children in pointing tasks by detecting the type of motion that occurs when children have difficulty pointing at a target, and triggering a precision mode that slows the speed of the mouse cursor in those cases. We conducted a study with 30 four year old participants who completed point-and-click tasks with and without PointAssist. PointAssist provided participants with significant advantages in terms of click accuracy, enabling them to be as accurate as 18 to 22 year olds in a previous study with a very similar setup.
- Ahlström, D., Hitz, M. & Leitner, G. (2006). An evaluation of sticky and force enhanced targets in multi target situations. Proceedings of NordiCHI 2006. ACM Press: pp. 58--67. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Blanch, R., Guiard, Y. & Beaudouin-Lafon, M. (2004). Semantic Pointing: Improving Target Acquisition with Control-Display Ratio Adaptation. CHI Letters, 6(1), 519--526. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Crook, C. (1992). Young children's skill in using a mouse to control a graphical computer interface. Computers and Education, 19(3), 199--207. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Gallahue, D. L. (1989). Understanding Motor Development: Infants, Children, Adolescents (2nd ed.). Indianapolis, Indiana: Benchmark Press.Google Scholar
- Grossman, T. & Balakrishnan, R. (2005). The Bubble Cursor: Enhancing Target Acquisition by Dynamic Resizing of the Cursor's Activation Area. Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2005). ACM Press: 281--290. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hourcade, J. P. (2006). Learning from Preschool Children's Pointing Sub-Movements. Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children (IDC 2006). ACM Press: pp. 65--72. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hourcade, J. P., Bederson, B. B., Druin, A. & Guimbretiere, F. (2004). Differences in Pointing Task Performance Between Preschool Children and Adults Using Mice. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 11(4), 357--386. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hourcade, J. P., Crowther, M. & Hunt, L. (2007). Does Mouse Size Affect Study and Evaluation Results? A Study Comparing Preschool Children's Performance with Small and Regular-Sized Mice. Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children 2007. ACM Press: pp. 109--116. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Joiner, R., Messer, D., Light, P. & Littleton, K. (1998). It Is Best to Point for Young Children: A Comparison of Children's Pointing and Dragging. Computers in Human Behavior, 14(3), 513--529.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Jones, T. (1991). An empirical study of children's use of computer pointing devices. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 7(1), 61--76.Google ScholarCross Ref
- King, J. & Alloway, N. (1993). Young children's use of microcomputer input devices. Computers in the Schools, 9, 39--53.Google ScholarCross Ref
- MacKenzie, I. S. (1992). Fitts' Law as a Research and Design Tool in Human-Computer Interaction. Human-Computer Interaction, 7, pp. 91--139. Google ScholarDigital Library
- MacKenzie, I. S., Kauppinen, T. & Silfverberg (2001). Accuracy measures for evaluating computer pointing devices. Proceedings of CHI 2001. ACM Press: pp. 9--16. Google ScholarDigital Library
- McGuffin, M. & Balakrishnan, R. (2002). Acquisition of Expanding Targets. CHI Letters, 4(1), 57--64. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Meyer, D. E., Abrams, R. A., Kornblum, S., Wright, C. E. & Smith, J. E. K. (1988). Optimality in Human Motor Performance: Ideal Control of Rapid Aimed Movements. Psychological Review, 95(3), 340--370.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Mithal, A. K. & Douglas, S. A. (1996). Differences in Movement Microstructure of the Mouse and Finger-Controlled Isometric Joystick. Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 96). ACM Press: 300--307. Google ScholarDigital Library
- National Center for Education Statistics (2005). Digest of Education Statistics, 2004. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, NCES 2006-005.Google Scholar
- Sanders, M. S. & McCormick, E. J. (1993). Human Factors in Engineering and Design. Seventh Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
- Soukoreff, R. W. & MacKenzie, I. S. (2004). Towards a standard for pointing device evaluation, perspectives on 27 years of Fitts' law research in HCI. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 61, 751--789. Google ScholarDigital Library
- van Mensvoort, K. (2008). PowerCursor. Available at powercursor.com.Google Scholar
- Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, E. Souberman, Eds.). Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
- Worden, A., Walker, N., Bharat, K. & Hudson, S. (1997). Making Computers Easier for Older Adults to Use: Area Cursors and Sticky Icons. Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 97). ACM Press, 266--271. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Zhai, S., Conversy, S., Beaudouin-Lafon, M. & Guiard, Y. (2003). Human On-line Response to Target Expansion. CHI Letters, 5(1), 177--184. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- PointAssist: helping four year olds point with ease
Recommendations
Differences in pointing task performance between preschool children and adults using mice
Several experiments by psychologists and human factors researchers have shown that when young children execute pointing tasks, they perform at levels below older children and adults. However, these experiments have not provided user interface designers ...
Learning from preschool children's pointing sub-movements
IDC '06: Proceedings of the 2006 conference on Interaction design and childrenSeveral studies have shown that children's performance with input devices in pointing tasks increases with age. However, none of these studies analyzes the sub-movements children make during pointing tasks. This paper analyzes mouse event data from a ...
PointAssist: assisting individuals with motor impairments
CHI '13: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsWe tested PointAssist, software that assists in pointing tasks by detecting difficulty through a sub-movement analysis and triggering help, with adjustments proposed to personalize the assistance provided to individuals with motor impairments. A within-...
Comments