Eliciting usable gestures for multi-display environments

• Main Authors: SEYED, Teddy, BURNS, Chris, COSTA SOUSA, Mario, MAURER, Frank, TANG, Anthony
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2012
• Subjects: cross-device interaction; gestures; mobile devices; multi-display environments; multi-display interaction; multi-surface environments; tabletop; touch; Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/7988; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/8991/viewcontent/2396636.2396643.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Multi-display environments (MDEs) have advanced rapidly in recent years, incorporating multi-touch tabletops, tablets, wall displays and even position tracking systems. Designers have proposed a variety of interesting gestures for use in an MDE, some of which involve a user moving their hands, arms, body or even a device itself. These gestures are often used as part of interactions to move data between the various components of an MDE, which is a longstanding research problem. But designers, not users, have created most of these gestures and concerns over implementation issues such as recognition may have influenced their design. We performed a user study to elicit these gestures directly from users, but found a low level of convergence among the gestures produced. This lack of agreement is important and we discuss its possible causes and the implication it has for designers. To assist designers, we present the most prevalent gestures and some of the underlying conceptual themes behind them. We also provide analysis of how certain factors such as distance and device type impact the choice of gestures and discuss how to apply them to real-world systems.