Core Concepts
This study empirically identifies the most intuitive and suitable mid-air gestures for efficient web-based interaction, based on the analysis of a large set of gestures proposed and validated by a diverse user sample.
Abstract
The study involved 56 students as designers and 273 external users as co-designers and evaluators. The designers first identified the main actions required for a web-based interaction with a university classroom search service, and then proposed a set of mid-air gestures to carry out these actions. The proposed gestures were then validated by external users.
The authors analyzed the results and identified the most recurring or intuitive gestures, as well as potential issues associated with the proposals. Based on this analysis, they defined a mid-air gesture dictionary that contains the most suitable gestures for each identified web action.
The key findings include:
- Users tend to replicate gestures used in touch-based and mouse-based interfaces for touchless interactions, which can be problematic due to the different distance between the user and the device.
- The most popular gestures involve the use of the index finger for cursor pointing, a double-tap of the index finger for click confirmation, and the use of the index and middle fingers for scrolling.
- For page resizing, the expansion of both hands is the most widely adopted gesture.
- A quick hand movement to the left or right is the preferred gesture for quick browsing history navigation.
- The closure of the hand in the whitespace, followed by movement, is the selected gesture for panning within a resized page and for drag-and-drop actions.
- Specific gestures are introduced for interaction initialization, stopping the interaction, accessing the homepage, and reloading the page.
The authors conclude by discussing the contributions, limitations, and future directions of this research.
Stats
The study involved 56 students as designers and 273 external users as co-designers and evaluators.
The designers proposed a total of 99 different mid-air gestures for 16 different web actions.
Quotes
"Users tend to replicate gestures used in touch-based and mouse-based interfaces also in touchless interactions, ignoring the fact that they can be problematic due to the different distance between the user and the device in each interaction context."
"The most widely adopted gesture for resizing the page involves the expansion of both hands."
"The most frequently recurring gesture for navigating in history involves using the entire hand to make a swift movement to the left or right, depending on the desired direction in the browsing history."