Do a google search on the cause and prevention of computer-related RSI and you will find pages upon pages of information on repetitive motion, static tension, workstation ergonomics, break timers, and ergonomic input alternatives (split keyboards, vertical mice).  What you won't find much on is the reason you are moving your mouse so much to begin with:  the software interface.

This website is dedicated to promoting the insight that software (specifically the Graphical User Interface) plays a leading and overlooked role in causing mouse-related RSI. Although mouse-related RSI will be a risk as long as mice are used, some software is especially high-risk due to requiring a lot of unnecessary mouse use – mouse use that could have been avoided with proper attention to ergonomics.   Because the physical manipulation of the mouse is dictated to a large degree by the software interface, the interface designers (software manufacturers) must take up their responsibility for making the intrinsic RSI-risk as low as possible.

My colleagues and I estimate that our mouse use with the CAD program we use (Pro/Engineer) is double what it would be if it had been designed more ergonomically (virtually no keyboard shortcuts possible).  Not surprisingly, more than half of us have some degree of RSI.  Even my limited Windows use shows me that it has not been designed with ergonomics in mind.  It should be.

This website is intended to encourage the development of more user-friendly / low RSI-risk software by raising awareness among users, who will then demand change through:

1. • Customer feedback to the software manufacturers.
   

2. • RSI liability lawsuits (for the USA)
   

3. • Government regulation (for Europe)
   

Insurance companies paying workman’s compensation claims and peripheral manufacturers could also stand to gain through a balance to the current hardware-centric view of RSI causation.

IN A NUTSHELL

Software is a hand-operated information processing tool, which makes use of computer hardware to function.  Hardware is merely the enabler of the software.  The input devices are the slaves of the software interface, and do not have any RSI-causing ability in themselves.  Because software is physically operated with your hands and arms, it must be designed to minimize the burden (health risk) on the body, just as all sorts of other physically operated equipment is designed to minimize the health risk to the user.  Software manufacturers must take up their responsibility for this, either voluntarily, through regulation, or because of RSI-liability lawsuits.  It is the software that causes mouse-related RSI.

You can change your mouse, keyboard, or workplace ergonomics, but it is the software manufacturers who, through their arrangement of buttons, menus, workflows, and other features of the Graphical User Interface, determine how you must actually move your mouse.  If it weren’t for the input requirements of the Software User Interface, you could be relaxing with a beer in your hand instead of giving yourself RSI with a mouse in your hand.

My central arguments are outlined in a letter I sent to Parametric Technology Corporation, the makers of the CAD program ProEngineer, which is what I was using when I got RSI.  I am aware that there are other contributing factors to RSI other than software, but I will not address those because they are adequately discussed elsewhere on the web.

HOW YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE

I would appreciate any help from anyone who would like to take up the cause.  You can send a link to this website to an RSI sufferer you know.  You could write a letter to a software manufacturer.  I would appreciate advice if anyone has expertise in the legal or regulatory ramifications of this idea.  Would anyone like to help with promoting and/or refining the idea?