A Study on Proximity-based Hand Input for One-handed Mobile Interaction

Florian Müller, Mohammadreza Khalilbeigi, Niloofar Dezfuli, Alireza Sahami Shirazi, Sebastian Günther, Max Mühlhäuser

SUI 2015

Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction

TL;DR

What we did: We conducted a study to investigate the efficacy of proximity-based hand input for one-handed mobile interaction using the elbow joint's flexion and extension.

What we found: We found that the accuracy and efficiency of interactions in a multi-layer information space are significantly affected by the traveling distance to the target layer, while hand side and direction of interaction do not have a significant impact.

Takeaway: Our findings inform guidelines for designing on-body user interfaces, emphasizing the need to tailor layer thickness and number based on users' arm lengths to optimize interaction.

Abstract

On-body user interfaces utilize the human’s skin for both sensing input and displaying graphical output. In this paper, we present how the degree of freedom offered by the elbow joint, i.e., exion and extension, can be leveraged to extend the input space of projective user interfaces. The user can move his hand towards or away from himself to browse through a multi-layer information space. We conducted a controlled experiment to investigate how accurately and ef-ficiently users can interact in the space. The results revealed that the accuracy and effciency of proximity-based interactions mainly depend on the traveling distance to the target layer while neither the hand side nor the direction of interaction have a signifcant inuence. Based on our findings, we propose guidelines for designing on-body user interfaces.