Spider Controls: An Innovative Radial-Selection Design for Menu, Toolbar, and List Box Controls (Based on a Theoretical Extension of Fitts’ Law)

Dr. Stanley W. Driskell

7:00pm
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
411 West Hall (Ehrlicher Room) directions...

A solution to the failure of the widely used Fitts’ Law to rigorously define its "Distance" and "Width" parameters is proposed. The result - Extended Fitts’ Law - is shown to give better predictions than do current methods of where users "hit" during acquisition of arbitrarily shaped targets. This ability to better predict where users "hit" a target led to conceptualization of exciting, new designs for the frequently used menu, tool bar, and combo box controls. This innovation, Spider Controls, provides the computer-human interface with 25-30% greater speed and lower error rates than experienced with prevailing designs.

The talk opens with a hands-on demonstration of Spider Controls, implemented on MSWord, that is certain to provocatively elicit your opinion. The talk will then resume the more prosaic tone of academic propriety by reviewing criteria for the evaluation of interface controls. These criteria will be applied to prevailing menu, tool bars, and list box designs to show that these designs are ripe for improvement. Being an equal-opportunity critique, the usability criteria are applied to each of the Spider Controls and judged against the prevailing equivalent control. Laced throughout these comparisons will be demonstrations that allow you to visually evaluate the Spider Control and prevailing designs. The talk ends with a summary of how Extended Fitts’ Law was developed and will describe the two experiments that affirmed the validity of this extension and its subsequent application to the design of Spider Controls.

SPEAKER BIO

Dr. Driskell was originally an economist, holding a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. During this incarnation he spent twelve years in several less developed countries of Africa and the Orient. While in no way relevant to Spider Controls, during this period he lived through one revolution and three coups d'etat, and experienced life under two dictators, not to mention facing a charge from thirteen yards by a very angry elephant and scuba diving off the Borneo coast. This excitement was made possible by lecturing and consulting that entailed assisting various government ministries computerize data analysis based on a work force averaging less than high school education. To better understand how modestly qualified persons can be taught the efficient use of computer technology, Dr. Driskell enrolled for an MSc degree in Computer Science at Michigan. After being happily corrupted by the likes of Judy Olson and David Kieras, he extended his studies to include a Michigan PhD with concentration on the design of computer-human interfaces. After a stint teaching Information Systems at the University of Michigan (Dearborn), Dr Driskell opted to work full time developing the metrics necessary to measure the physical and mental effort expended during manipulation of a computer-human interface. To date, these efforts have resulted in five patents with two more pending, the development of Spider Controls, and the prospect of several publications.