Impact Activation Improves Rapid Button Pressing

Abstract

The activation point of a button is defined as the depth at which it invokes a make signal. Regular buttons are activated during the downward stroke, which occurs within the first 20 ms of a press. The remaining portion, which can be as long as 80 ms, has not been examined for button activation for reason of mechanical limitations. The paper presents a technique and empirical evidence for an activation technique called Impact Activation, where the button is activated at its maximal impact point. We argue that this technique is advantageous particularly in rapid, repetitive button pressing, which is common in gaming and music applications. We report on a study of rapid button pressing, wherein users' timing accuracy improved significantly with use of Impact Activation. The technique can be implemented for modern push-buttons and capacitive sensors that generate a continuous signal.

Geometrically Compensating Effect of End-to-End Latency in Moving-Target Selection Games

“…So, while not intuitive, an increase in latency can lead to a reduction in the error rate. This illustration that the system's response can sometimes be too fast in a task involving participant anticipation of input timing replicates and theoretically extends the results of some studies previously reported upon [24,[27][28][29]. The model's assumptions about the effects of latency on the input distribution's µ and σ values were verified.…”

“…If the system response is faster than the user's anticipation, a non-intuitive conclusion follows: that latency must be increased for minimizing the discordance. This effect has recently been reported by several authors [24,[27][28][29]. In their studies, delaying the system response of the button-pressing reduced the user's error rate by 5-94%.…”

“…in theory [44]. Also, positive effects of latency on usability have been reported in several recent works [24,27,29].…”

“…The player must anticipate and plan the input so as to acquire the target successfully. A series of models for predicting user error rates in such anticipated input tasks has recently been published [24,[27][28][29][35][36][37]. The moving-target selection model extended in this paper [28] is the latest of these.…”

On the Latency of USB-Connected Input Devices

“…However, as they use a Logitech G300 as reference mouse in all tests, whose absolute latency we report in this paper, absolute latencies for the other mice can be easily calculated. A commenter on rafalog, Chou Star, seems to have implemented a system that is quite similar to our LagBox 11 . They use the GPIO pin on a Raspberry Pi to toggle the electrical circuit of a mouse button while the mouse is connected to the Raspberry Pi.…”