Breaking the laws of action in the user interface

Fitts' law, Steering law and Law of crossing, collectively known as the laws of action, model the speed-accuracy tradeoffs in common HCI tasks. These laws impose a certain speed ceiling on precise actions in a user interface. My hypothesis is that for some interfaces, the constraints of these laws can be relaxed by using context information of the task. To support this thesis, I present two systems I have developed for penbased text input on stylus keyboards. These systems break either Fitts' law or the Law of crossing by taking advantage of high-resolution information from the pen, and the fact that words can be seen as patterns traced on the keyboard. Using these systems users can potentially gain higher text entry speed than on a regular stylus keyboard that is limited by the laws of action. I conclude by discussing planned future research, primarily improved visual feedback and empirical evaluation

Breaking the Laws of Action in the User Interface

Fitts ’ law, Steering law and Law of crossing, collectively known as the laws of action, model the speed-accuracy tradeoffs in common HCI tasks. These laws impose a certain speed ceiling on precise actions in a user interface. My hypothesis is that for some interfaces, the constraints of these laws can be relaxed by using context information of the task. To support this thesis, I present two systems I have developed for penbased text input on stylus keyboards. These systems break either Fitts ’ law or the Law of crossing by taking advantage of high-resolution information from the pen, and the fact that words can be seen as patterns traced on the keyboard. Using these systems users can potentially gain higher text entry speed than on a regular stylus keyboard that is limited by the laws of action. I conclude by discussing planned future research, primarily improved visual feedback and empirical evaluation. Categories & Subject Descriptors: H.5.2 [Information Interface