I need to find some online resources for Fitz Law, and the associated
testing/analysis regarding user interface optimization.  Offline
resources would be interesting too (i.e. books), however suboptimal.

DTH

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Clarification of Question by dth-ga on 05 Aug 2003 15:13 PDT

Someone's going to get an easy $2.  It's actually Fitts Law.  That was
why I could not find it.

DTH

Hi DTH,

I believe you are referring to Fitts's Law, also known as Fitts' Law,
named after researcher Paul M. Fitts.

There is a definition on Bruce Tognazzini's web site:

http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html#fitts's law

He also has a widely-cited article that refers to the Law in a more
general discussion:

http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html


There's an article in the Wikipedia free encyclopedia:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts'_law


An article on "Fitts's UI Law Applied to the Web" by Scott Berkun of
Microsoft:

http://www.uiweb.com/issues/issue09.htm


A search for "Fitts" in the HCI Bibliography of Human-Computer
Interaction Resources finds many research papers, many of which deal
with the Law:

http://www.hcibib.org/

(Curiously, a search for "Fitts' Law" found only a few.)


Notes on Fitts's Law from a Human-Computer Interaction course at
Virginia Tech:

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~cs5724/g1/


There's a web-based test of Fitts's Law here:

http://www.tele-actor.net/fitts/


If you really want to get into it, I. Scott MacKenzie's PhD. thesis
"Fitts' Law as a Performance Model in Human-Computer Interaction" is
available on the web at:

http://www.yorku.ca/mack/phd.html

Dr. MacKenzie also has an extensive Fitts's Law bibliography at:

http://www.yorku.ca/mack/RN-Fitts_bib.htm


Search Strategy

A search for "Fitz Law" led me to

http://www.lukew.com/folio/writings/recommended.html

This page referred to a discussion of the Law in the book "Tog on
Software Design" by Bruce Tognazzini.  I happened to have the book, so
I looked in the index and found the correct spelling.  Then I just
searched Google and selected links that looked useful.


By the way, I agree with Mr. Tognazzini that "Fitts's" with two s's is
more correct, but "Fitts'" with one s seems to be more commonly used.

I hope this information is helpful.  If you need any further
assistance, please ask for a clarification.

--efn

Excellent and complete answer.  I particularly appreciate the
grammar/syntax comment at the end.

DTH

What I've heard, is that if the guy is dead, then you leave off the
additional s after the apostrophe.  Paul Fitts died in in 1965, hence
"Fitts' Law".