goms_klm_questions.txt

This exercise was done by Michael Meckl.

a) The term "critical path" was adopted from the project management domain and
serves a similar purpose with regard to GOMS. In a series of parallel activities
the critical path is the longest sequence of these actions necessary to perform
the given task and therefore shows the minimum amount of time needed for this task.
To determine the critical path all activities and their dependencies on other
activities need to be known, so all parallel tasks can be visualized, e.g. in a
so-called "schedule chart".


b) Most people use their laptop's touchpad instead of a mouse to do pointing.
The original KLM does not include touchpads which is why the H operator for switching
between keyboard and mouse doesn't really fit as the touchpad is much closer to
the keys than a mouse would normally be. Another part of the original model that 
changes for laptops is the pointing operator ('P') as pointing with a touchpad is 
not exactly the same as pointing with a mouse and might influence the needed time
as well. One way to overcome these issues is to empirically collect new data for 
the H and P operators specifically for laptops.