HCI - Human Computer Interaction

March 30, 2009 - 5:25p PST
Documented Observation #1 - Lenovo Laptop Middle Mouse Button

First I must start by saying that IBM/Lenovo laptops are very stable, durable and high performance machines. Few months ago, I got an X61 Thinkpad. I was readily impressed by its sleel looks and compact size (I'm big fan of lightweight and small machines). Small didn't mean less power. It has 4GB RAM and dual core 64bit processor. I would like to share some of my expriences with it.

OK now the good part of this post. There's no touch pad on it :) and what you have is a small red mouse button in the middle of the keyboard. My initial thoughts about it were sarcastic. And while using it for first few days, I kept rubbing my thumb on the area below mouse-left and mouse-right buttons. But hey, there's nothing there to scroll or move mouse. Now I had to use my index finger to caress the red mouse button and click the mouseleft button for left clicks with my thumb. I came from using Sony VAIO where I would simply "tap" my finger to do a click. However, the good thing is that mouse-left button (or mouse-right) for that purpose doesn't really make much noise (unlike my Sony VAIO SZ series). My first experiences with this obscure mouse button were not too good.

Now the second problem with this middle-mouse. In "normal" laptops I could scroll page(s) by sliding my finger in the right or bottom corners of the touch pad for vertical and horizontal scrolling respectively. But since there's no touch pad on it, there is a button in the middle of mouse-left and mouse-right buttons, which can be pressed (kept down) and red middle-mouse button moved to scroll in either direction. It works very similer to pressing scroll wheel of a traditional mouse and then moving the mouse. But not impressive because if I don't have a proper driver for it, it would move (scroll) the page in mutliple directions. So there exists a driver that lets me scroll in either horizontal or vertical directions instead of having a free hand movement.

OK now let's talk about the cognitive learning part in using such devices. Sometimes this learning could actually be better for ergonomics of the human computer interaction. After couple of months of playing with the middle-mouse button, I realized that I'm having to move my hand much less, and my fingers (for the purpose of mouse movements) don't have to move much. Which made me realize that my hands aren't getting as tired as they were with a touch-pad based laptop. Not to mention, there was some extra time involved in placing my fingers (thumb and index) to the right place before I could go start moving my mouse and clicking etc. It's a bit different than just moving index finger on any part of the touch-pad. It's worthwhile to notice that IBM/Lenovo probably didn't put a touchpad in this computer due to its size (12 inch screen) but the bigger Lenovo models contain both a touchpad and the middle-mouse.

Actually because I did talk about Sony, I should also mention about an ultra mobile PC I used couple of years ago (I'll write in detail about it, later). The similarity between the Lenovo X61 and Sony UX Series is that UX also had a similar mouse button in the top right corner of the base of the device. BTW it's a touch screen tiny computer with only 4.5 inch screen and it runs Vista.

Conclusion: I think middlemouse button is bit odd to start with but it certainly provides better ergonomics when used for a longer bit of time.