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The angle mouse: target-agnostic dynamic gain adjustment based on angular deviation

Published:04 April 2009Publication History

ABSTRACT

We present a novel method of dynamic C-D gain adaptation that improves target acquisition for users with motor impairments. Our method, called the Angle Mouse, adjusts the mouse C-D gain based on the deviation of angles sampled during movement. When angular deviation is low, the gain is kept high. When angular deviation is high, the gain is dropped, making the target bigger in motor-space. A key feature of the Angle Mouse is that, unlike most pointing facilitation techniques, it is target-agnostic, requiring no knowledge of target locations or dimensions. This means that the problem of distractor targets is avoided because adaptation is based solely on the user's behavior. In a study of 16 people, 8 of which had motor impairments, we found that the Angle Mouse improved motor-impaired pointing throughput by 10.3% over the Windows default mouse and 11.0% over sticky icons. For able-bodied users, there was no significant difference among the three techniques, as Angle Mouse throughput was within 1.2% of the default. Thus, the Angle Mouse improved pointing performance for users with motor impairments while remaining unobtrusive for able-bodied users.

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          cover image ACM Conferences
          CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
          April 2009
          2426 pages
          ISBN:9781605582467
          DOI:10.1145/1518701

          Copyright © 2009 ACM

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          Publication History

          • Published: 4 April 2009

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          CHI '09 Paper Acceptance Rate277of1,130submissions,25%Overall Acceptance Rate6,199of26,314submissions,24%

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