Psychophysical Comparison of Five Mouse Designs

 There are many studies comparing input devices to the mouse. Their results indicate that the mouse performs better (i.e. lower movement times and errors) and is often the preferred among the devices tested. However, the mouse is usually the least ergonomic of all of the devices. Therefore, manufacturers have developed different mouse-type designs to create safer and more comfortable devices. Studies show that some of these devices are more ergonomic than the mouse although performance measures for these devices are not always collected or reported. This experiment examines psychophysical measures for four mouse-type devices: the Vertical Mouse (Evoluent LLC), Renaissance Mouse (3M), Quill Mouse (Appliances, Inc), Contour Mouse (Contour Design, Inc) and compares them to a Microsoft mouse. Three of the devices, Quill Mouse (QM), Renaissance Mouse (RM), and Vertical Mouse (VM) hold the forearm in a neutral position with two of them (QM and RM) constraining wrist movements. The other two, Contour Mouse (CM), and Microsoft mouse (MS), require a pronated forearm to manipulate the device. We hypothesized that the mouse would have the highest performance while the two wrist constraining devices, QM and RM, would have the lowest.