Evaluating devices for object rotation in 3D

Abstract

An experiment with 12 participants was conducted to compare the performance of a mouse, a mobile phone accelerometer, and a joystick in a 3D rotation task. The 3D rotation task was designed to measure throughput, the user performance metric specified in ISO 9241-9. The mouse had a throughput and error rate of 4.09 bps and 0.88%, respectively, the mobile phone 2.05 bps and 3.46%, and the joystick 2.42 bps and 1.76%. The differences were significant between the mouse and both the mobile phone and joystick, but not between the mobile phone and joystick. There was a significant difference in error rate only between the mouse and mobile phone conditions. The mobile phone condition did not appear to conform to Fitts’ law as task index of difficulty had no apparent relationship with movement time. This was most likely caused by reaction time and homing time for that condition.