Active target zones

[Jim]

Hello:

This sounds very interesting. If you expand the Dwell Area it should accomplish the same thing in our software, but from the sounds of it this is somehow different. Is there anyway we can download and try this software?

Adjusting the Dwell Area to be larger means that the cursor needs to be in that defined area for an amount of time you specify, by the Dwell Time setting. Using this combination of settings you should be able to mimic the other softwares behavior. Again, we would love to check out the other software to see how we can improve our own.

Thanks.

[Rose-Marie]

After unsuccessfully tweaking the dwell clicking software to allow my 7-yr-old daughter to use her TrackIR to activate communications software (Speaking Dynamically Pro), last night I turned off Dwell Clicker and set SDPro's alternative access features to control the TrackIR dwelling. The difference in her success is remarkable. Instead of depending on a crisp movement onto a target, the alternative access features allow her to creep onto a target and it will activate within a specific time if she simply stays within the edges of that target. We can size these targets however large she needs them, measuring in inches instead of pixels. With her unsteady head movements, this is the first she has been able to be successful.

I am not technologically savvy, so I don't know what to call the difference between this ability to activate by keeping the cursor within a target's borders and the need to dwell steady on a specific cluster of pixels. Is there some control feature inside the NaturalPoint software that could be adjusted to expand this "border-control" to other programs? I haven't seen anything of this nature, but maybe you could point me to it?

Thanks,
Rose-Marie

[Rose-Marie]

JIm--

Thanks for your quick reply. You guys are the best at that!

Mayer-Johnson is the manufacturer of Speaking Dynmically Pro. I don't know what kind of downloads they have available for preview. In a nutshell, the software allows the user to design target "buttons" of any size and then assign functions, such as voice output, typing, screen changes, program launches, etc. Targets can be accessed through any number of modes, including their own version of head mouse control in which the user specifies dwell time. Dwell area is pre-defined as anywhere within a created button's borders.

The best analogy I can think of to explain the difference in the alternative access control provided through Speaking Dynamically Pro and through NaturalPoint is to think of Microsoft Paint. NaturalPoint allows you to specify number of pixels in which movement is accepted, much like Paint's paintbrush tip can be sized to color a band of pixels. The SDPro controls act more like the "pour" feature of the paint bucket, allowing the entire area within a border accept color--or, in this case, to accept cursor movement. Since the targets can be sized to whatever the user needs, it makes the cursor control extremely forgiving. To date, we haven't been able to set a large enough dwell area in NP software.

Several baby-toddler game programs use what seems to be this same sort of target border definition. Reader Rabbit Toddler and Jumpstart Baby are two that come to mind. I could be all wrong in how I intepret their reading of dwell area, but the effect is the same as SDPRo's.

Another feature that the SDPro alternative access allows is that the user can creep over the target's border and once the cursor enters the border, dwell time begins. There is no need to enter a target with a crisp approach, as we have found necessary with NaturalPoint's dwell. We see this same need for crisp intention with some touch screens as well, which doesn't work for a child like ours whose movements drag.

I hope that clarifies the differences we see. I would love for you to see how the TrackIR works under SDPro's control, because it behaves like a different critter. If the TrackIR controls could be set to read target borders, much like Paint's "pour" bucket does, that would expand our daughter's uses considerably.

Thank you,
Rose-Marie

[Jim]

Hello:

Thanks for the detailed description, I think I understand it now.

I think that the reason we can't work like the SDPro software is that we don't know what the boarders of the objects for clicking really are, we don't have that information from the programs themselves. This prevents us from knowing where one button starts and another stops so you can increment a timer on just that one button and when you move to another, if even a little movement across the boarder, then the counter resets. I guess that we are a more generic type of dwell program.

I can think of one idea to make the Dwell function easier to use, we can display a transparent window around the cursor that will show the actual dwell area, and could change the color as the dwell time increased, or something similar. This ability exists in Windows 2000 and beyond. Perhaps this would equate to a floating button, like in the SDPro software.