Integrality and separability of input devices

TLDR

Existing input device taxonomies focus mainly on mechanical structure. The study argues that device selection should consider perceptual structures of tasks and devices, not just physical form, as perception drives performance on multidimensional tasks. The authors extended perceptual structure theory to interactive tasks, then experimentally compared a 3‑D tracker and a mouse on two tasks with distinct perceptual structures, measuring speed, accuracy, and movement trajectories. Results confirm that matching task perceptual structure to device control structure improves performance, supporting the predictive framework.

Abstract

Current input device taxonomies and other frameworks typically emphasize the mechanical structure of input devices. We suggest that selecting an appropriate input device for an interactive task requires looking beyond the physical structure of devices to the deeper perceptual structure of the task, the device, and the interrelationship between the perceptual structure of the task and the control properties of the device. We affirm that perception is key to understanding performance of multidimensional input devices on multidimensional tasks. We have therefore extended the theory of processing of percetual structure to graphical interactive tasks and to the control structure of input devices. This allows us to predict task and device combinations that lead to better performance and hypothesize that performance is improved when the perceptual structure of the task matches the control structure of the device. We conducted an experiment in which subjects performed two tasks with different perceptual structures, using two input devices with correspondingly different control structures, a three-dimensional tracker and a mouse. We analyzed both speed and accuracy, as well as the trajectories generated by subjects as they used the unconstrained three-dimensional tracker to perform each task. The result support our hypothesis and confirm the importance of matching the perceptual structure of the task and the control structure of the input device.