Comparison of Performance of Computer Pointing Devices for Chinese Aged People

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of computer pointing devices on computer using of aging people in Chinese mainland. A total of 16 elder users whose average age was 65 without any computer experience before were selected as subjects in a tracking task. Three pointing devices including traditional mouse, touch pad and track point in notebook were evaluated. The operation performance which included correct ratio and operation time and the subjective reaction using NASA-TLX workload questionnaire were recorded during the tasks. The results of ANOVA showed that the accuracy ratios of the three pointing devices were not significantly different, and the mean operation time for the correct trials of track point was significantly longer than the other two devices. The further correlation analysis between the operation times and scores of workload indicated that the performance index of operation time for pointing devices correlated with satisfaction scores.