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ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI 2016)
DigitSpace: Designing Thumb-to-Fingers Touch Interfaces for
One-Handed and Eyes-Free Interactions
Da-Yuan Huang 1 Liwei Chan1,3 Shuo Yang1 Fan Wang1
Rong-Hao Liang1 De-Nian Yang2 Yi-Ping Hung1 Bing-Yu Chen1
1National Taiwan University
2Academia Sinica
3Keio University
Abstract
Thumb-to-fingers interfaces augment touch widgets on fingers, which are manipulated by the thumb. Such interfaces are ideal for one-handed eyes-free input since touch widgets on the fingers enable easy access by the stylus thumb. This study presents DigitSpace, a thumb-to-fingers interface that addresses two ergonomic factors: hand anatomy and touch precision. Hand anatomy restricts possible movements of a thumb, which further influences the physical comfort during the interactions. Touch precision is a human factor that determines how precisely users can manipulate touch widgets set on fingers, which determines effective layouts of the widgets. Buttons and touchpads were considered in our studies to enable discrete and continuous input in an eyes-free manner. The first study explores the regions of fingers where the interactions can be comfortably performed. According to the comfort regions, the second and third studies explore effective layouts for button and touchpad widgets. The experimental results indicate that participants could discriminate at least 16 buttons on their fingers. For touchpad, participants were asked to perform unistrokes. Our results revealed that since individual participant performed a coherent writing behavior, personalized $1 recognizers could offer 92% accuracy on a cross-finger touchpad. A series of design guidelines are proposed for designers, and a DigitSpace prototype that uses magnetic-tracking methods is demonstrated.
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Further readings: Project Gauss: Portable Object Tracking Using Magnetic Sensor Grid
BibTex
@inproceedings{Huang:2016:DDT:2858036.2858483, author = {Huang, Da-Yuan and Chan, Liwei and Yang, Shuo and Wang, Fan and Liang, Rong-Hao and Yang, De-Nian and Hung, Yi-Ping and Chen, Bing-Yu}, title = {DigitSpace: Designing Thumb-to-Fingers Touch Interfaces for One-Handed and Eyes-Free Interactions}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems}, series = {CHI '16}, year = {2016}, isbn = {978-1-4503-3362-7}, location = {Santa Clara, California, USA}, pages = {1526--1537}, numpages = {12}, url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2858036.2858483}, doi = {10.1145/2858036.2858483}, acmid = {2858483}, publisher = {ACM}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, keywords = {ergonomics, eyes-free, one-handed, thumb-to-fingers}, }