A User Evaluation on Mouse Movements in Visual Interfaces

We investigate mouse movement as an interaction technique to solve tasks in simple visual interface settings. For this purpose, we recruited 17 participants in a controlled within-subjects study. The design of the study is based on six different task groups. As an independent variable, we tested the impact of typical Gestalt principles visually encoded in user interfaces on the dependent variable mouse movement, in particular on movement path trajectories and task completion times until mouse click. The variations of the independent variable take into account Gestalt principles such as proximity, similarity, common region, and figure ground, testing cases in which the principles are followed and cases in which they are disregarded. We illustrate movement paths as trajectory visualizations in three variations showing the paths themselves over space and time, movement speed, and mouse clicks. The main result of the study suggests that visual interfaces that follow Gestalt principles produce shorter mouse movement paths and task completion times.