Improving Target Acquisitions through Utilizing Pen Pressure
Xiangshi Ren, Jibin Yin, Shengdong Zhao, Yang Li · InTech eBooks · 2008
To improve the performance for selecting targets in a dense layout, we designed the Adaptive Hybrid Cursor (including Zoom Cursor), a novel interaction technique for penbased systems, which enables users to adjust the size of the background, the targets and/or cursor the simultaneously. The Adaptive Hybrid Cursor dynamically adapts the permitted upper boundary of a zoomable selection cursor based on the current index of difficulty of a desired target. As shown in our Experiment, the Adaptive Hybrid Cursor showed advantages over other techniques in performance for small targets in a high density environment. The subjective preferences also showed that the Adaptive Hybrid Cursor was the most preferred technique among the three techniques tested. Overall, the Adaptive Hybrid Cursor showed significant improvements in a pen-based selection task. It works well with a pen, and in expanding contexts. At the same time, it offers competitive selection performance without losing the background selection capability, and does not expand the context in groups of big targets, in normal and low-density environments. By contrast, many of the other mouse and pen-based interaction techniques have been shown to work well only in low density environments or on isolated targets .