An investigation of Fitts' law in a multiple-display environment
Dugald Ralph Hutchings · 2012
We describe the design and analysis of a Fitts' law experiment, conducted in a multiple-display environment (MDE), in which the physical gap between displays and the proximity of targets to the gap systematically varied. Participants achieved decreasing throughput values (a combined measure of movement time and accuracy in a target acquisition task) under increasing gap sizes. Participants likewise performed relatively poorly in tasks involving monitor crossing over all gap conditions, especially so when motion either originates or terminates very close to the gap. Both results could be considered surprising since in either case, the amount of mouse movement needed to successfully execute the task does not change based on physical gap size or a target's proximity to the edge. Fitts' law may underestimate the difficulty of movement tasks in MDEs.