Paper Reading #23: User-Defined Motion Gestures for Mobile Interaction

User-Defined Motion Gestures for Mobile Interaction

Chi '11

By:
Jaime Ruiz, Yang Li, Edward Lank.

• Jaime Ruiz is currently a Doctoral Student in HCI at the University of Waterloo.
• Yang Li has a PhD in Computer Science from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is currently a Senior Research Scientist for Google.
• Edward Lank has a PhD in Computer Science from Queens University. He is currently an Assistant Professor for Computer Science at the University of Waterloo.

Summary
Hypothesis
The authors of this paper feel that there needs to be more research into how to optimally use and program all the multiple three dimensional sensors on modern smart phones.

Methods
To test their device and check the validity of their ideas they chose to have 20 participants were asked to design, implement and test a motion gesture to control and command smart phones. These user created gestures were analysed for accuracy and usefulness and then used in a 2nd study. In the second study users were asked to perform aforementioned gestures and then rank them based on how accurately they related to the command at hand and the ease of use.

Results
As natural most participants in the first study came up with simple, obvious gestures of commands that mimicked typical use. They physical nature of the phone and its dimensions were extensively used and users found it relate able to deal with the phone as a physical object.

Contents
The paper spent a large amount of time describing the experiment set up, its objectives and its results. Most participants felt that gestures that were more natural should be mapped more frequently so as to make them easy to learn and more intuitive. The paper goes on to discuss the parameters used to analyse gestures and then manipulated by participants. They further determine taxonomy dimensions as gesture mapping and physical characteristics. Gesture mapping gets further broken down depending upon abstract, metaphor, physical and symbol.

Discussion
This paper was interesting to read, and while it shows great leaps and bounds of progress in the field of mobile devices and how we interact with them, I wasn't all that impressed. I see no reason for all this work, and personally I am perfectly happy using keys to communicate effectively with my device as opposed to trying to use a gesture multiple times before finally getting it right.