Design and analysis of acceleration methods for finger-controlled pointing devices

Abstract

As the resolution of a notebook display increases, the efficiency of a touchpad is becoming a more important issue. In particular, it is often observed that users scrape the pad repeatedly to reach the close button of a window. In this thesis, we propose two new cursor control methods utilizing the contact-area information that is provided by most touchpads. We compared the new methods with the mouse acceleration that is the most common cursor control method. An evaluation study showed that the new methods required smaller number of scrapings and shorter distance of scraping on the touchpad while their efficiency is similar to that of the mouse acceleration. All participants preferred the new methods to the mouse acceleration. Finally, the new method is applied to smaller finger-controlled pointing devices and resulted in reducing physical effort.