TapTap and MagStick: Improving one-handed target acquisition on small touch-screens

We present the design and evaluation of TapTap and MagStick, two thumb interaction techniques for target acquisition on mobile devices with small touch-screens. These two techniques address all the issues raised by the selection of targets with the thumb on small tactile screens: screen accessibility, visual occlusion and accuracy. A controlled experiment shows that TapTap and MagStick allow the selection of targets in all areas of the screen in a fast and accurate way. They were found to be faster than four previous techniques except Direct Touch which, although faster, is too error prone. They also provided the best error rate of all tested techniques. Finally the paper also provides a comprehensive study of various techniques for thumb based touch-screen target selection.