Pop Through Mouse Buttons:

This paper presents a powerful, yet strikingly simple and novel modification in the design of a conventional computer mouse that enables a user to feel, and the computer to discretely sense, two distinct "clicks" on each mouse button, activated by pressing lightly and pressing firmly to pop through. We achieve this double-action effect by converting the standard mouse buttons to pop through tactile pushbuttons that are similar to those widely used as the focus/shutterrelease buttons on consumer photographic cameras. We present this mouse design in a prototype stage both to describe the compelling interactions we have already developed and to inspire further investigation. The direct impact of our mouse modification is a third button state for each button that makes possible a family of fast, robust button gestures that are composable with or even preferable to well-known gestures such as double-click. Moreover, the qualitative impact creates a different user experience if the three button states are applied in a cognitively meaningful way; for example, if pressing lightly maps to default behaviors such as invoking a short menu, and then pressing firmly to pop through maps to behaviors presenting more control, such as a long menu. In addition to describing the hardware modification, we present a number of such meaningful guidelines