Effects of age and gender on remote pointing performance and their design implications

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of age and sex on remote pointing movements. In addition, an attempt was made to incorporate possible age-related or sex differences into the design of a remote pointing user interface. The subjects were recruited from three age groups (elderly, middle-aged, and young) with equal number of both sexes. The participants were required to perform cursor positioning tasks using a remote pointing device. Their static hand stability and remote positioning time were recorded and analyzed. The remote positioning time was further separated into two components: initial submovement duration and adjustment submovement duration. The results reveal that age-related effects reduced the subjects' ability to perform remote pointing tasks and also maintained hand stability. However, sex differences had no significant effect on either performance. Moreover, the results also reveal that remote positioning movements for the young group were mostly completed in their initial submovement phase, while the elderly subjects spent most of their movement time on the fine adjustment phase. In light of the fact that different age groups exhibit different kinds of movement behavior patterns, suggestions for the design of signal sensitivity, target features, and display/control gain in remote pointing user interface were outlined. Relevance to industry Investigations on the variation in physical and psychomotor capabilities between the sexes and between different age groups which affect remote pointing performance will facilitate the design of remote pointing user interface. This study investigated the effects of age on remote pointing actions and outlined some suggestions for the design of remote pointing user interface.