León-Chacón, Luis A.

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    Touchmouse: design and implementation of a touchscreen based paper-equivalent electronic form
    (2007) León-Chacón, Luis A.; Vélez-Rivera, Bienvenido; College of Engineering; Rodríguez-Martínez, Manuel; Rivera-Vega, Pedro I.; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Ríos, Isabel
    Many regulated manufacturing companies use paper forms to collect daily production data thus becoming burdened with manual data entry and paper-intensive processes yielding considerable inefficiencies for managing and handling thousands of paper forms. By digitizing and automating form-based processes, they can operate efficiently, analyze information effectively and reduce user errors considerably. Badía- Reyes [1] proposed a Paper Equivalent Form framework (PEF) that manages digital forms while keeping a continuous and cryptographically certified audit trail of all changes. PEF provides a user interface rich in buttons and options designed to be used with a mouse or a pen. Mice require a flat surface and they are inconvenient in certain scenarios such as clean rooms because they can trap dust and dirt or in public places where they can be lost or stolen by users. Touch screen technology can solve some of these inconveniences. However, user interfaces designed for mice and pens are often difficult to adapt to touch screens without considerable modification to the application. Some problems include visual obstruction on the screen by the user’s finger and the difficulty to manipulate small objects. These modifications often require dual versions of the application to be developed and maintained thus significantly increasing development time and costs. We propose the TouchMouse, a new touch sensitive cursor for touch screens that can combine the advantages of touch screen technology with the high precision of a mouse or pen. By using the TouchMouse, there is no need to make complex modifications to an existing application in order to adapt it to touch screens. We conducted usability studies to calculate the relative efficacy of the TouchMouse versus the Mouse and versus paper forms and we evaluated the learning speed of using the TouchMouse. These studies evidence that users can manipulate electronic forms with the TouchMouse with comparable efficiency to the mouse. They also evidence that users can learn to master the TouchMouse with remarkable ease. The main advantages of the TouchMouse are allow manipulation of small objects, maintain the user gaze in the screen, do not need additional desk space and do not require complex modifications to application.