Pointing Task Performance Study On Adaptive-based Mouse

Command-line interfaces have been replaced by graphical user interfaces (GUIs) today.Pointing at a target is a fundamental element in graphical user interfaces (GUIs), so research onpointing performance can have a large effect on practical significance. Control-display gain (CDgain) is a key parameter in pointing task on mouse.Usually, CD gain is a unit free coefficient that maps the movement of the pointing device tothe movement of the display pointer; the reciprocal is called the CD ratio. Three questions existin previous studies on CD gain: firstly, since then the control device hardware limitations, theaccuracy of pointing could not be guaranteed in those studies. Secondly, in the previous adaptiveCD gain techniques, users often encounter such a condition that when pointer go across theboundary of a target in process of a pointing task, the CD gain will have a sharp and nonlinearchange, which is contrary to the user’s habits. Finally, there are no previous studies to examinethe relation between control-display gain and pointing performance in different difficulty of task.This study examined the effect of control-display gain on performance on mouse. Firstexperiment examined the relation between control-display gain and pointing performance onmouse. Second experiment examined the effect of different control-display gain type onperformance on mouse. Third experiment examined the effect of different control-display gaintype on performance in a complex task.The results showed that：(1) Control-display gain has significant effect on performance. There was an invertU-shaped profile for performance versus control-display gain.(2)The performance of low-difficulty task was superior to high-difficulty. These areappropriate control-display gain on mouse to make user achieve optimal performance for task indifferent index of difficulty.(3)The performance of adaptive control-display gain was superior to Adaptablecontrol-display gain and constant control-display gain.(4)In a complex task, adaptive control-display which is completely matching the task have asuperior performance than which was not.This study has important theoretical and practical significance to the mouse pointing operation optimization and design improvement in GUI.