"Expanding targets" will help to make silver surfing easier

04/07/2008

Computers are used by people of all ages. For some people, though, difficulties with mouse and cursor control can make it difficult to use a computer easy and effectively, which can become more of a problem when we get older.

 

A new piece of research has looked at whether techniques which have been developed to help with “point and click” activities improve mouse and cursor control in both older and younger people. The research found that targets which expanded to a larger size, giving the user a bigger area to click on, meant that users were able to complete tasks faster and made fewer mistakes.

 

Compared with static targets, which are typical of a “regular” computer screen, expanding targets gave a 13% improvement in the time taken to select, and reduced numbers of mistakes made by 52.4%, for both older and younger users. Previous studies of techniques which aid target selection have shown the benefits for younger users, but they have not fully investigated the performance of older people using these techniques.

The research was led by Dr Faustina Hwang from the University of Reading. Dr Hwang said: “Our findings show that expanding targets may help to make computers easier for older people to use.

 

"Compared with younger users, older people experience greater difficulties positioning the cursor on the computer screen, take longer making selections and homing-in on a target, and make more mistakes when selecting targets. These difficulties can present a significant limitation to using a computer easily and effectively. Target selection is such an important and frequent task, so any improvements that we can make will have a big impact on overall computer use.

"Computers are an excellent way of tackling social isolation, which can become a problem as we get older. We hope that by making the basic tasks involved in computer use quicker and easier, more people will be able to take advantage of the benefits that computers can offer; for example, keeping in touch with family and friends, accessing information about healthcare and community services, or booking air and train tickets.”

So, how long will it be before we can choose to have expanding targets as an option when we start up the computer? This research concentrated at looking at one expanding target at a time, and so further investigations will need to be done to look at how target expansion will work in more realistic situations where there are multiple targets on the computer screen.

 

In the future, this could benefit not only personal computers, but also other technology such as wall-sized displays, touch-screens on mobile devices, or assistive robots.

For more information, see the website linked below.