An experimental comparison of a mouse and arrow-jump keys for an interactive encyclopedia

This paper reports on an experiment which was conducted to examine relative merits of using a mouse or arrow-jump keys to select text in an interactive encyclopedia. Timed path traversais were performed by subjects using each device, and were followed by subjective questions. Personality and background of the subjects were recorded to see if those attributes would affect device preference and performance. The arrow-jump keys were found to have the quickest traversal times for paths with either short or long target distances. The subjective responses indicated that the arrow-jump method was overwhelmingly preferred over the mouse method. Personality type was not found to play a critical role.