Floor Mouse (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Floor Mouse (2018)

jefftk.com

22 pointsrzk10 comments

I have a surf mouse which is kind of fun on my standup desk. I never really got the hang of it, but it is too cool to get rid of. https://www.surfmouse.io/ maybe it is for you.

This is so cool. How'd you find it? Can you use it continuously for a whole day? Can you use it while sitting? How long does it take to learn and adapt to it?

I found the creator on reddit a year or so back where he showed it off. I want to support small guys so I took a chance that it wasn't a scam, and it came and works.

I find that it forces standing perfectly straight and still, while I like to wobble when standing so I never use it long.

I never tried sitting with it, the FAQ says you can. YMMV.

Learning doesn't take long, just plug it in, stand on it an watch your mouse move.

Whew, 300 bux.... but it does seem like it would make a keyboard based workflow a lot easier....

Shameless plug, but you may like the Inertia Mode of my TPMouse script[0] if you need a keyboard-based workflow systemwide.

[0] https://github.com/EsportToys/TPMouse

Can't wait for the eye tracking of the Apple VR headset as described in this video to become more common https://youtu.be/OFvXuyITwBI?t=228 seems like the most ergonomic way to interact with the computer

I find eye-tracking interface to be very clunky and constraining. You have to restrict where you are pointing your eyes, or you will select things by accident and then you'll miss what's going on in the world. I think any prolonged session will give people eye-strain. 3D goggles already do. With eye-tracking doubly so.

What if a vocalized "click" were enough to set the focus on the thing you are looking directly at ? Maybe just a grunt ?

Apparently commercially produced "foot mouse" devices have been marketed for quite some time, as early as 1985 [1]. TIL.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footmouse

Glenn Pearson and Mark Weiser developed the "Mole" at the University of Maryland in 1988.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/49108.1046356

SIGCHI Bulletin

January 1988 Volume 19 Number 3

EXPLORATORY EVALUATIONS OF TWO VERSIONS OF A FOOT-OPERATED CURSOR-POSITIONING DEVICE IN A TARGET-SELECTION TASK

GLENN PEARSON, MARK WEISER, University of Maryland

Abstract

An investigation is on-going concerning the use of feet instead of hands to perform workstation cursor-positioning and related functions. In the exploratory studies reported here, two versions of a particular foot-operated device, the swing mole, were assessed against a mouse in a base-line target-selection task. This task had some of the elements involved in text editing, but did not directly include keyboard entry. The study showed that novices can learn to select fairly small targets using a mole, while revealing shortcomings in the current mole design and suggesting directions for redesign.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/57167.57169

EXPLORATORY EVALUATION OF A PLANAR FOOTOPERATED CURSOR-POSITIONING DEVICE

Glenn Pearson and Mark Weiser, Computer Science Department, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742.

ABSTRACT

The use of feet instead of hands to perform workstation cursor-positioning and related functions has been the subject of an on-going investigation. In the exploratory study reported here, a particular foot-operated device, the planar slide mole, was assessed against a mouse in a target-selection task. The study showed that novices can learn to select fairly small targets using a mole; for a target size of l/S” square, the response time equaled that of the mouse when keyboard homing time was taken into account.

https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/files/211100042/CSUR_FootInte...

The Feet in HCI: A Survey of Foot-Based Interaction

EDUARDO VELLOSO, Lancaster University; DOMINIK SCHMIDT, Hasso Plattner Institute; JASON ALEXANDER, Lancaster University; HANS GELLERSEN, Lancaster University; ANDREAS BULLING, Max Planck Institute for Informatics

2. RELATED WORK

We are not the first to attempt to systematise the work on foot interaction. When Pearson and Weiser began the development of their moles, they provided a historical classification of the feet in the interaction with devices. In the pre-industrial era, their function was to transmit both power and control (e.g. the horseman’s stirrup, the farmer hay fork and shovel, the pipe’s organist’s bellows and foot keys, the potter’s kick wheel). With the advent of electricity and other means of providing power, their function shifted to control alone (e.g. car pedals, arcade games, gas pressure controls, guitar effects pedals). Finally, they were used for foot-mediated input for computers (e.g. flight controls for aircrafts and simulators and volume and sustain controls in music synthesisers) [Pearson and Weiser 1986]. Whereas this classification puts the role of the feet as an interaction modality in context, it does not provide a structure for modern devices.

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