Paper Reading #8: Gesture Search: A Tool for Fast Mobile Data Access

Gesture Search: A Tool for Fast Mobile Data Access

By:
Yang Li

Presented at UIST 2010.

• Yang Li has a PhD in Computer Science from the Chinese Academy of Science and a Post Doctoral from in EECS from University of California at Berkeley.

Summary
Hypothesis
The Author of this paper hypothesises that considering the large amount of data stored on modern mobile devices, gesture search will allow for quicker and more efficient data recall compared to current and more traditional methods of accessing data on modern mobile devices.

Methods
In addition to being available to public, Gesture Search has been tested in laboratory settings. The Authors asked participants answer a survey post (which used a 5 point Likert scale) their use of Gesture Search.

Results
Gesture Search received a median rating of 4.5/5 out of 5000 ratings from users. Of the 59 people that responded to the survey the vast majority agreed that Gesture Search was useful and usable (giving a media score of 4/5). Survey takers found Gesture Search most useful for searching through contacts (media 4/5) which makes sense considering 66% of the users used it for contact search, however they were not as excited by its use for searching through applications (median 3/5). The Author believes the greatest reason for a reduced score for applications was due to the fact that it wasn't used often for applications since most used applications fit on the homepage. The Author believes with the wide variety of applications available, eventually Gesture Search will find itself to be used more frequently for finding applications.

Contents
This paper dealt with showing the superiority of Gesture Search over other available search methods and to explain the methods employed to implement Gesture Search. Gesture Search essentially allows users to "gesture" (essentially draw/graffiti) a character on their touch screen mobile devices and then Gesture Search uses the character defined on the screen to search whatever application is open. Gesture Search uses a timeout to delimit multistroke gestures, thus making it more user friendly. The ability to avoid UI and just scribble on the screen allows for ease of use while the speed of the search allows for efficiency.

Discussion
Having personally used something like this (I'm not certain if it was Gesture Search or not) I'm surprised to see how truly complex its implementation is. Gesture Search is certainly a far more polished version of what I have used in the past, and it shows. Gesture Search is a fantastic tool for users with touch screen based mobile devices. It's main use would perpetually remain contacts search, however the fact that it has the ability to interact with practically any applications makes it highly versatile and makes it possible to customize it for whatever needs may arise in the future.