Pointing Lenses: Facilitating Stylus Input Through Visual- And Motor-Space Magnification

Using a stylus on a tablet computer to acquire small targets can be challenging. In this paper we present pointing lenses - interaction techniques that help users acquire and select targets by presenting them with an enlarged visual and interaction area. We present and study three pointing lenses for pen-based systems and find that our proposed Pressure-Activated Lens is the top overall performer in terms of speed, accuracy and user preference. In addition, our experimental results not only show that participants find all pointing lenses beneficial for targets smaller than 5 pixels, but they also suggest that this benefit may extend to larger targets as well.