ReachPad : a 2.5D pointing device supporting reach-and -push operations in a remote-control environment

Abstract

Pointing device is any piece of hardware equipments used to transfer human``s output into the computer as spatial information. It should clearly catch the user``s intent to promote the effective interaction technique. However, nowadays pointing device and their interaction technique have been more focused on mechanically feasible way than understanding of human``s behavior. We cannot transfer our knowledge of how to interact with the physical environment to operate the interface of current pointing device. In this research, we propose a new pointing device that provides a user with naturalness by supporting human``s inherent reaching and selecting movement (reach-and-push). Firstly, differences between reach-and-push and point-and-click were characterized and reasons for those differences were identified for designing new pointing device. Our design concept was based on idea for complementing those reasons. The new pointing device is prototyped and then evaluated by comparison to other pointing devices. As a result of evaluation, we confirmed that our prototype shown the features of the reach-and-push and observed that effect of our prototype in computing task such as text entry task.