Clarifying the Effect of Edge Targets in Touch Pointing through Crowdsourced Experiments

Abstract

A prior work has recommended adding a 4-mm gap between a target and the edge of a screen, as tapping a target located at the screen edge takes longer than tapping non-edge targets. However, it is possible that this recommendation was created based on statistical errors, and unexplored situations existed in the prior work. In this study, we re-examine the recommendation by utilizing crowdsourced experiments to resolve the issues. If we observe the same results as the prior work through experiments including diversities, we can verify that the recommendation is suitable. We found that increasing the gap between the target and the screen edge decreased the movement time, which was consistent with the prior work. In addition, we newly found that increasing the gap decreased the error rate as well. On the basis of these results, we discuss how the gap and the target should be designed.