Exploring Pointer Enhancement Techniques for Target Selection on Large Curved Display

TL;DR

This study examines how user position affects pointing performance on large curved displays and evaluates cursor enhancement techniques to improve speed and accuracy across different user locations.

Contribution

It investigates the impact of user position on pointing performance and evaluates effective cursor enhancement techniques for large curved displays.

Findings

Pointing speed increases with distance from the display, accuracy decreases.

Lateral user positions slow down pointing performance.

Combining acceleration, distance adjustments, and cursor enlargement improves performance.

Abstract

Large curved displays are becoming increasingly popular due to their ability to provide users with a wider field of view and a more immersive experience compared to flat displays. Current interaction techniques for large curved displays often assume a user is positioned at the display's centre, crucially failing to accommodate general use conditions where the user may move during use. In this work, we investigated how user position impacts pointing interaction on large curved displays and evaluated cursor enhancement techniques to provide faster and more accurate performance across positions. To this effect, we conducted two user studies. First, we evaluated the effects of user position on pointing performance on a large semi-circular display (3m-tall, 3270R curvature) through a 2D Fitts' Law selection task. Our results indicate that as users move away from the display, their pointing speed significantly increases (at least by 9%), but accuracy decreases (by at least 6%). Additionally, we observed participants were slower when pointing from laterally offset positions. Secondly, we explored which pointing techniques providing motor- and visual-space enhancements best afford effective pointing performance across user positions. Across a total of six techniques tested, we found that a combination of acceleration and distance-based adjustments with cursor enlargement significantly improves target selection speed and accuracy across different user positions. Results further show techniques with visual-space enhancements (e.g., cursor enlargement) are significantly faster and more accurate than their non-visually-enhanced counterparts. Based on our results we provide design recommendations for implementing cursor enhancement techniques for large curved displays.