Varying Subjective Speed-accuracy Biases to Evaluate the Generalizability of Experimental Conclusions on Pointing-facilitation Techniques

Abstract

In typical experiments to evaluate novel pointing-facilitation techniques, participants are asked to perform a task as rapidly and accurately as possible. However, the balance can differ among participants, and the techniques’ effectiveness would change if the majority of participants give weight to either speed or accuracy. We investigated the effects of three subjective biases (emphasizing speed, neutral, and emphasizing accuracy) on the evaluation results of pointing-facilitation techniques, namely Bubble Cursor and Bayesian Touch Criterion (BTC). The results indicate that Bubble Cursor outperformed the baseline in terms of movement time and error rate under all bias conditions, while BTC underperformed a simpler target-prediction technique, which was an inconsistent outcome to the original study. Examining multiple biases enables researchers to discuss the (dis)advantages of novel or existing techniques more precisely, which can be beneficial to reach a more reliable conclusion.