Advanced Investigation of Steering Performance with Error-Accepting Delays

Abstract

The Steering Law is a robust model to predict the movement time ($MT$) for steering through a constrained path, and the most representative example in human-computer interaction (HCI) is navigating cascaded menus. In typical implementations of cascaded menus, however, users can deviate from the path for a short time; we call this error-accepting delay, or $T_{\mathit{delay}}.$ Yamanaka modified the Steering Law to predict $MT$ under several $T_{\mathit{delay}}$ conditions, and our goal is to investigate the reproducibility of his model with more various $T_{\mathit{delay}}$ values. In addition, HCI researchers have recently formed a consensus that the goodness of models should be judged by the prediction accuracy for future (untested) task conditions. Thus, for the sake of completeness, we conducted two analyses: a shuffle-split cross-validation and leave-one-$T_{\mathit{delay}}$-out cross-validation. The results showed that, regardless of the all-data and cross-validation analyses, Yamanaka’s modified model outperformed the baseline Steering Law, which strengthened his original experimental report.

Keywords:

• Graphical user interfaces (GUI)
• user performance modeling
• Steering Law
• replication study

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This modification is justified by the fact that the simplest approach to model a dependent variable is to sum the additional factor ($T_{\mathit{delay}}$) to the baseline model. This is explained in introductory statistics textbooks or websites, e.g., https://www3.nd.edu/∼rwilliam/stats2/l55.pdf, retrieved November 18, 2022.

2 We used the same apparatus as in the original study (Yamanaka, 2019), and this 57.9 ms latency was measured by Yamanaka using a 1000-fps high-speed camera.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Takuma Hidaka

Takuma Hidaka is currently studying for a MSc in Engineering at the University of Tsukuba. He received his BSc in Media Sciences and Engineering from the University of Tsukuba in 2021. His research interests include human-computer interaction.

Yusuke Sei

Yusuke Sei belongs to ValueCommerce Co., Ltd. He received his MEng in Engineering from the University of Tsukuba in 2022. His research interests include human-computer interaction.

Naoto Nishida

Naoto Nishida is currently studying for a MSc in Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo. He received his BSc in Media Sciences and Engineering from the University of Tsukuba in 2022. His research interests include human-computer interaction.

Shota Yamanaka

Shota Yamanaka is a senior chief researcher at Yahoo! JAPAN Research. He received a PhD in engineering from Meiji University in 2016. His research interests include human-computer interaction, graphical user interfaces, and human performance modeling.

Buntarou Shizuki

Buntarou Shizuki is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Tsukuba. His research interests include human-computer interaction. He received BSc, MSc, and DSc from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1994, 1996, and 2000.