Inertial Cursors

What, I hear you ask, could be done to improve this zen of UI design that is my cursor control device? Well, to answer that question we must first look at why other things have been invented, and why there is a plethora of mouse alternatives out there.

By far the best mouse I have ever used is my beloved logitech MX1000. It's not only responsive and comfortable, it also weighs a ton. This I at first disliked until it needed recharging. Upon moving back to my old mouse I found something was odd – reaching my taskbar suddenly required effort, and moving a window across my monitor or finding the bottom of my start menu became a relatively herculean task. The problem? My mouse was too light – every time I tried to throw my mouse along the desk it'd just sit there lethargic and inactive, waiting for a shove.

Instead of having to use an insanely heavy mouse, the inertial cursor system will develop these abilities: no longer will your cursor be locked to your mouse's position, it'll float, as if in a potential well on your screen. Admittedly this is a confusing description, as it'll float to within a pixel of the real position when the mouse is moving slowly or is stationary, hence providing the precision and control only possible with a mouse.

Flick your wrist, however, and the cursor breaks free of the mouse's position and flies across the screen, gradually slowing to a stop somewhere over the other side, depending on how hard and fast the flick was and how much friction your desktop is set to provide. Not only would you be able to reposition the cursor without having to wave your hand 14 feet across the desk, but you can control its flightpath with further movements – a flick up would send the cursor gently curving up as it flies, and another flick back would halt it mid-flight and return precise control.

Each element on-screen could have a different frictional coefficient associated with it, so that the cursor is more likely to stop over a button or a tab, for example. This would make it easier to pinpoint elements on dialogue boxes or windows on other monitors that require a large flick.

This could easily be disabled or enabled using a toggle button on the mouse, or be toggled automatically in software to maintain precise positioning for gaming, and with the addition of motion sensors the mouse could be used as a gyroscopic control system similar to those used in presentation remotes, but for a fraction of the cost and with an already familiar control technique. Scrolling could be revolutionised – a simple flick down or up would not move the cursor but the document, far easier than having to drag or use a conventional scrollwheel.

Of course, this system could also be used for touchpads or those hideous little laptop keyboard nipples, but that would largely be defeating the point, as those already provide the effortless action, just without the precision. For the system to work the physical mouse position would have to be linked to the potential well of cursor position and vice-versa, which may cause some cursor wandering if the effect is not damped (as minute movements cause a feedback loop going off in some random direction).

For a quick sample of this just duct tape some weights to your mouse, or buy a logitech MX1000, which seems to already have the weights in it ;-)