Speed-accuracy tradeoff: A Formal Information-Theoretic Transmission Scheme (FITTS)

The information-theoretic basis of Fitts’ law is usually understood in HCI via Fitts’ original analogy and Mackenzie’s work from the nineties. Here, we go beyond the analogy and propose a complete transmission scheme. We start by proposing a unifying approach under which to analyze several existing variations of the Index of Difficulty. We then provide a better correspondence between Shannon’s information theory and Fitts’ law, expressing the law as the result of a channel capacity calculation. A uniform noise model is considered, which is then gradually relaxed to encompass a quasi Gaussian noise case.