Paper Reading 16 – The Satellite Cursor: Achieving MAGIC Pointing without Gaze Tracking using Multiple Cursors

Comments
Paola Garza
Zach Henkel

Reference Information
The Satellite Cursor: Achieving MAGIC Pointing without Gaze Tracking using Multiple Cursors
 - Chun Yu, Yuanchun Shi, Ravin Balakrishnan, Xiangliang Meng, Yue Suo, Mingming Fan, and Yongqiang Qin
 - UIST 2010, New York, New York

Satellite Cursor targeting.

Summary
The Satellite Cursor is a new way to implement multiple cursor navigation.  In this implementation, only one actual cursor is needed for interaction.  The other cursors automatically appear and hover around the surrounding potential targets.  The system automatically calculates where to place each screen object’s satellite cursor by determining the relative position of each object in terms of the actual cursor’s location.  Then when the user moves the cursor, the satellite cursors move similarly so small movements by the user can touch many different objects with little effort.

To reduce screen clutter, the cursors are not all displayed at the same time.  There are various visual cues present in the system to denote where the hidden satellite cursors are located in reference to their objects.  One such method is a small dot that rotates around the object showing roughly where the satellite is located.

The satellite ear tracking method.

There were two user studies conducted to determine how much mouse movement and pointing time were decreased while using the Satellite Cursor system instead of conventional pointing.  The results were that pointing time was decreased a decent amount, while movement time was drastically decreased in all situations.  Because of this success, the designers would like to improve upon the design by improving target prediction algorithms to reduce cursor uncertainty, improving recognition of more complex UI elements such as menus, and some other tweaks and enhancements.

Discussion
While I do think this is a cool idea, I can’t help but feel it would take awhile to get used to the way the system works.  I would be willing to mess around with it, but I feel quite comfortable just using the regular pointer method.  I do have a larger monitor and I have never had too much trouble moving my mouse to whatever object I needed to interact with.  To me, it just seems like normal pointing is something you get used to so the guesswork is gradually eliminated.  It’s like playing a new first person shooter with slightly different mechanics.  It feels foreign at first, but you get used to the feel of the game until moving the crosshair feels extremely precise.  Either way, I would like them to continue work on Satellite Cursor.  It has the potential to be invaluable if they can tweak it to interact with all the different UI elements a user might run into.  If they can get it to feel extremely natural as well, they I could see this system catching on in niche markets.