Using Fitts' Law to Compare Sonification Guidance Methods for Target Reaching Without Vision

Coline Fons, Coline Fons, Sylvain Huet, Denis Pellerin, Christian Graff

2024

Abstract

Visually impaired people often face challenges in spatial interaction tasks. Sensory Substitution Devices assist them in reaching targets by conveying spatial deviations to the target through sound. Typically, sound guidance systems are evaluated by target reaching times. However, reaching times are influenced by target size and user-target distance, which varies across studies. We propose to explore the potential of Fitts’ law for evaluating such systems. In a preliminary experiment, visually impaired and sighted participants used non-spatialized sonification to reach 3D virtual targets. Movement times were correlated with the Index of Difficulty, confirming that Fitts’ law is a valuable model to evaluate target-reaching in 3D non-visual interfaces, even with non-spatialized sonification as feedback. In a second experiment, we compared two non-spatialized sonifi-cations, one dissociating the height and azimuthal direction of the target, and the other combining them into a single 3D angle. Fitts law did allow the comparison of performance in favor of the first sonification. The potential of using Fitts’ law to compare performances across studies using different experimental settings deserves exploration in future research. We encourage researchers to provide the full linear regression equations obtained when using Fitts’ law, to facilitate standardized performance comparisons across studies.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Fons C., Huet S., Pellerin D. and Graff C. (2024). Using Fitts' Law to Compare Sonification Guidance Methods for Target Reaching Without Vision. In Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: HUCAPP; ISBN 978-989-758-679-8, SciTePress, pages 444-454. DOI: 10.5220/0012346400003660

in Bibtex Style

@conference{hucapp24,
author={Coline Fons and Sylvain Huet and Denis Pellerin and Christian Graff},
title={Using Fitts' Law to Compare Sonification Guidance Methods for Target Reaching Without Vision},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: HUCAPP},
year={2024},
pages={444-454},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012346400003660},
isbn={978-989-758-679-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: HUCAPP
TI - Using Fitts' Law to Compare Sonification Guidance Methods for Target Reaching Without Vision
SN - 978-989-758-679-8
AU - Fons C.
AU - Huet S.
AU - Pellerin D.
AU - Graff C.
PY - 2024
SP - 444
EP - 454
DO - 10.5220/0012346400003660
PB - SciTePress