COMPSCI 705/SOFTENG 702 Fitts' Law Activity

This Fitts' Law activity is based around experiential learning. Our app is designed for users to learn and practice Fitts’ Law in two different ways:

• By receiving theory-based prompts
• By receiving context-based prompts

Dependencies

In order to run the activity you must have NodeJS installed which can be found here: https://nodejs.org/en/

How to start the application

To run the program, simply navigate to the this folder, run the command "npm install" to install all the dependencies required, and then run "npm start" to actually start the task.

What should happen

Upon running those commands, a webpage should appear, instructing you on how to use the task.

Additionally a select box will be there to select the type of prompts (either activity based prompts or theory based prompts) which should give you further tips on how you can improve the UI design within the task.

Within the task there should be sliders to adjust the size and position of the currently selected menu - you can play around with these as you like

Once you finish experimenting with the size and shape of the menus, you should run the test by clicking the corresponding button in the settings pane, from there you will be guided through scenarios using the interface that you have adjusted to demonstrate the effects of how the size and shapes affect how difficult it is to use an interface (as Fitts's Law explains). Prompts will appear to guide you throughout the scenarios.

Differences between the project plan and actual implementation

Overall, the implementation follows the project plan that was proposed at the start of the project. Initially, the plan focused on implementing two different methods of teaching, which were interweaving the theoretical teaching material throughout the activity VS giving interactive feedbacks. In our actual implementation, we expanded on these concepts and finalised our two teaching methods to be:

• Giving feedback based on the input of the user. For example, if the user is making too many click mistakes, giving a feedback on increasing the size of the buttons.

• Not giving feedback but instead delivering the theory material step-by-step throughout the activity. This allows the user to incrementally read the theoretical materials and absorb the content at their own pace with minimal intervention.