Where Does the Mouse Go? An Investigation into the Placement of a Body-Attached TouchPad Mouse for Wearable Computers

Abstract

We investigated the effects of placement of a TouchPad input device on a user’s body for the control of a wearable computer. This study involved 25 subjects performing selection tasks with a TouchPad mouse while wearing a wearable computer on their back and using a head-mounted display. Each subject performed the tasks in 27 different combinations of four postures (sitting, kneeling, standing and prone) and seven different placements of the TouchPad mouse on the subject’s body (forearm, thigh by 2, torso by 2, and upper arm by 2). We measured the time and error rate to complete the selection of a circular target. The results for the effects due to posture showed that there were similar time effects for sitting, standing and kneeling. When examining the effects resulting from mouse position, the front of the thigh was shown to be the best position of the mouse. When the posturing and mouse position conditions were combined, the results indicated that the thigh front mouse position would be most appropriate for sitting, kneeling and standing postures, and the forearm mouse position would be best for the prone position.