A Comparison of Finger, Stylus and Mouse in Trajectory Tracing Task Execution on Touchscreen Mobile Devices.

In this paper, we empirically investigate the performance of trajectory tracing on mobile touchscreen devices. Our main goal is to compare three different tracing modalities, two of which rely on direct touch (finger and stylus) and one on indirect interaction (mouse). We conducted an experiment involving 25 users and a specially designed mobile application for managing trajectory tracing tasks and touch events logging. We describe the outcomes of this empirical study, with particular emphasis on tracing time and tracing error on a touchscreen tablet. In addition, we also discuss the associated interaction workload, specifically targeting the physical demand, perceived performance and effort, and level of frustration when using different ways to trace the given path. Finally, we show how the obtained data can be used to develop predictive models for trajectory tracing time.