b. 1951, Canada · Professor at York University, Toronto
Also known as: I. Scott MacKenzie, Scott MacKenzie
I. Scott MacKenzie is the leading contemporary researcher on Fitts's Law and on input-device evaluation more broadly. His 1992 paper Fitts's Law as a Research and Design Tool in Human-Computer Interaction introduced the Shannon formulation of Fitts's Law that is now standard in HCI: a logarithmic term of the form log2(D/W + 1), which behaves better than the original Fitts expression at small target sizes.
MacKenzie's books Human-Computer Interaction: An Empirical Research Perspective (2013, second edition 2024) and Text Entry Systems (2007, with Tatu Kauppinen) are the principal references for researchers running controlled HCI experiments and for designers of mobile-text input systems. He has contributed input-device research that shaped the design of touchscreens, soft keyboards and stylus input on contemporary devices.
Related people: Paul Fitts, Stuart Card
Works cited in this book:
- Fitts' Law as a Research and Design Tool in Human-Computer Interaction (1992)
- Extending Fitts' law to two-dimensional tasks (1992) (with William Buxton)
- Towards a standard for pointing device evaluation; perspectives on 27 years of Fitts' law research in HCI (2004) (with R. William Soukoreff)
- Human-Computer Interaction; An Empirical Research Perspective (2nd ed) (2024)
Discussed in:
- Chapter 5: Motor Control and Fitts's Law (The Shannon Formulation)
- Chapter 17: Predictive Modelling (Predicting Pointing Time)