Modeling the Effect of Target Shape on Movement Performance in a 1D2D Fitts Task

Abstract

Fitts’ law is used as a performance measurement metric in human–computer interactions. The original formulation implied that movement time was identical for movements with the same value of the index of difficulty under varied movement amplitude and target width. An experiment was designed to test this implication. The result indicates that movement time is related to the index of difficulty when the amplitude is constant. Nowadays, most of the icons in applications are represented as two-dimensional targets. An object of equal width and height is a particular case of a two-dimensional target. This target area could be a factor in a Fitts task and impact the movement time, number of errors, and perceived difficulty. Therefore, the area could replace the target width in the formulation of the index of difficulty. The modified index of difficulty is easy to implement without the complexity of post-calculation. Researchers can design the index of difficulty before the empirical test. This research proposes a modified index of difficulty by varying the target’s area and applying the square-root movement time model simultaneously, which results in an excellent performance with a higher R-square and satisfies the residual normality robustly than the traditional formulation of Fitts’ law.