Navigation as multiscale pointing
Yves Guiard, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Denis Mottet · 1999
Fitts pointing model has proven extremely useful for understanding basic selection in WIMP user interfaces. Yet todays interfaces involve more complex navigation within electronic environments. As navigation amounts to a form of multi-scale pointing, Fitts model can be applied to these more complex tasks. We report the results of a preliminary pointing experiment that shows that users can handle higher levels of task difficulty with two-scale rather than traditional one-scale pointing control. Also, in tasks with very high-precision hand movements, performance is higher with a stylus than with a mouse.