Is It Worth the Hassle? Moving from One-directional to Multi-directional on Fitts' Law Evaluation
Maria Francesca Roig-Maimó, Ramon Mas-Sansó · 2023
Based on the ISO 9241-411 standard to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of a pointing device, this article analyses the importance in the choice of either the one-directional point-select test or the multi-directional tapping test proposed for such a purpose. Traditionally, the multi-directional test is the chosen de facto to evaluate non one-directional pointing-devices such as mice, joysticks, trackballs or touchpads. However, the multi-directional test takes longer to complete, and the participants perceive it as more difficult. We conducted a user study to analyze the effect on throughput of using each of the tests while evaluating a mouse and a touchpad. The results show that while the multi-directional test takes longer and its error rate is lower, there is no significant difference on throughput. Our findings suggest that the one-directional test should not always be discarded de facto in front of the multi-directional test when evaluating the throughput of a pointing device.