The Birdlime Icon: Facilitating pointing by dynamically stretching target shape

We proposed the Birdlime Icon to facilitate pointing tasks by dynamically stretching its shape as it catches the overshooting cursor on GUI. Unlike existing techniques, this technique can reduce pointing time even in such realistic situation as there are many objects on a display. We conducted three experiments to examine the Birdlime Icon's performance. The comparison technique are Expansion which expands target size when the cursor approaches it and Sticky icons which reduces cursor velocity while the cursor is on the target. The first experiment was conducted in a single target situation, the second was conducted with multiple targets selection task, and the third was in the situation that the cursor must go through some distracters to reach the target. The experiment results show that the Birdlime Icon is the practical technique that can always maintain positive performance even in multiple target situations while the compared techniques drop their performance in some conditions.