PieCursor: merging pointing and command selection for rapid in-place tool switching

  • Authors:
  • George Fitzmaurice;Justin Matejka;Azam Khan;Michael Glueck;Gordon Kurtenbach

  • Affiliations:
  • Autodesk, Toronto, Canada;Autodesk, Toronto, Canada;Autodesk, Toronto, Canada;Autodesk, Toronto, Canada;Autodesk, Toronto, Canada

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

We describe a new type of graphical user interface widget called the "PieCursor." The PieCursor is based on the Tracking Menu technique and consists of a radial cluster of command wedges, is roughly the size of a cursor, and replaces the traditional cursor. The PieCursor technique merges the normal cursor function of pointing with command selection into a single action. A controlled experiment was conducted to compare the performance of rapid command and target selection using the PieCursor against larger versions of Tracking Menus and a status quo Toolbar configuration. Results indicate that for small clusters of tools (4 and 8 command wedges) the PieCursor can outperform the toolbar by 20.8% for coarse pointing. For fine pointing, the performance of the PieCursor degrades approximately to the performance found for the Toolbar condition.