050 Fitts’ Law
The time required to touch a target is a function of the target size and the distance to the target.
• Proposed by American psychologist Paul Fitts.
• Used to model pointing to an object or computer screen using your finger or pointing device.
• The law is predictive over a wide variety of conditions, devices, and people.
• The primary implication of Fitts’ law is that close, large targets can be accessed more quickly and with fewer errors than distant, small targets.
• Constraints can effectively increase target size. For example, a dropdown menu located at the top of a computer display effectively has infinite height because the screen edge stops the cursor.
• Consider Fitts’ Law when designing controls and control layouts. Keep ...
Get The Pocket Universal Principles of Design now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
