The touch mouse is a new type of computer mouse that provides users with a new way of touch-based environment to interact with computers. For more than a decade, user experience (UX) has grown into a core concept of human-computer interaction (HCI), describing a user's perceptions and responses that result from the use of a product in a particular usage context. This paper presents an empirical study of UX on touch mice via the user experience questionnaire (UEQ) survey, the purpose of which is to uncover how target users perceive the selected touch mice after interacting with them. A total of 20 university students were recruited as target users to participate in the UX test to perform defined tasks with the 6 selected touch mice under the Windows 8 operating environment. The experimental results can help researchers understand how users perceive and value such new type of computer mouse, thus ensuring positive UX and leading to more desirable touch mice.Keywords: user experience, touch mouse, user experience questionnaire (UEQ), empirical study
INTRODUCTIONA computer mouse is a peripheral device used to control a cursor in two dimensions in a graphical user interface (GUI). It typically features two buttons and a scroll wheel, which can also act as a third button. Over the past few decades, the computer mouse has become one of the most effective input devices when interacting with computers, and there have been a lot of relevant studies concerning the use of computer mouse, particularly in the ergonomic (e.g., Card et al., 1978;Delisle et al., 2004;Lin & Tsai, 2015;Müller et al., 2010;Onyebeke et al., 2014) and educational (e.g., Donker &Reitsma, 2007;Lane & Ziviani, 2010) fields. With the popularity of smartphones, tablets, and many types of information appliances, touchscreens have been being commonly used for users to interact with GUIs on the screen. Microsoft Windows 8 released in 2012 has also provided a new GUI that supports both desktop and touch devices. The touch screen has often been declared as more intuitive and convenient than traditional input devices. As its control interface overlays the monitor, there is no need for such extra devices as the mouse, which needs a space-occupying carrier and operating environment. Moreover, the touch screen is much more robust and durable as compared with other mobile input [2875][2876][2877][2878][2879][2880][2881][2882][2883][2884][2885] devices (Albinsson & Zhai, 2003). Despite the aforementioned advantages, it is not completely superior to the mouse in terms of operational performance (Forlines et al., 2007;Kin et al., 2009;Sears & Shneiderman, 1991;Wu et al., 2011). In keeping with the touchscreen trend, the touch mouse, a new type of computer mouse, offers a blending for input and manipulation that is halfway between a traditional mouse and touch screen. This new type of computer mouse enables users to use touch gestures such as press, pinch, slide, tap, and swipe to enhance their interaction with the computer. Touch-based interaction with computing dev...