This paper describes a study which was done during development of the word processing application of the System/23 Datamaster system to evaluate the use of contextual and screen-oriented cursor designs. Subjects were required to add and replace characters in existing text and add characters to the ends of lines and pages.
Results of this study indicate that the screen-oriented cursor design is a better interface for first-time users. All subjects using this design interface performed faster, made fewer assistance calls and committed fewer errors. Further, the untrained subjects using the screen-oriented cursor performed better than the trained subjects who used the contextual cursor.
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