Exploring performance of thumb input for pointing and dragging tasks on mobile device

Abstract

Thumb based interaction is becoming increasingly popular in mobile devices. However, the interaction still remains slow, ambiguous, and error-prone. This paper presents an exploratory user experiment results of one-thumb pointing and dragging task performance, based on three factors: mobile size, target size, and posture (sitting and walking positions). Beside obvious findings, we observed some surprising scenarios, such as the gripping style of most users was casual and did not follow any formal model or structure. We concluded our experiences into design implications with respect to mobile size, posture, and gripping styles.