IT IS BEST TO POINT FOR YOUNG-CHILDREN - A COMPARISON OF CHILDRENS POINTING AND DRAGGING

A mouse is the input device children principally use to control a comp uter in schools. However, somewhat surprisingly, there has been very l ittle research investigating the appropriate mouse control strategies for children. In this paper we report two studies which compared child ren's performance with two basic mouse operations; pointing and draggi ng. In Study 1 we investigated 7-year-old children (n = 24) who were i nexperienced with a computer mouse and found that they were quicker an d more accurate,vith pointing compared to dragging. In Study 2 we exam ined the performance of children (n = 90) from three different age gro ups: young (5-6 years), medium (8-9 years), and older (11 - 12 years). These children were more experienced with using a mouse. We found tha t older children were quicker and made fewer errors than younger child ren regardless of the mouse operation. We also found that younger chil dren were slower and made more errors with dragging than with pointing . There were no differences in performance between pointing and draggi ng for the other two age groups. The implications of these findings fo r the design of interfaces for children are discussed. (C) 1998 Elsevi er Science Ltd. All rights reserved.