Rake cursor: improving pointing performance with concurrent input channels

We investigate the use of two concurrent input channels to perform a pointing task. The first channel is the traditional mouse input device whereas the second one is the gaze position. The rake cursor interaction technique combines a grid of cursors controlled by the mouse and the selection of the active cursor by the gaze. A controlled experiment shows that rake cursor pointing drastically outperforms mouse-only pointing and also significantly outperforms the state of the art of pointing techniques mixing gaze and mouse input. A theory explaining the improvement is proposed: the global difficulty of a task is split between those two channels, and the sub-tasks could partly be performed concurrently. Author Keywords Fitts' law, multi-channel pointing, rake cursor. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g., HCI)]: User Interfaces ? Graphical user interfaces, Input devices and strategies.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Renaud Blanch, Michael Ortega
• Keywords: CHI 2009, Human Computer Interaction, Mouse Input Device, Pointing Task, Rake Cursor Interaction