Implications For a Gesture Design Tool

by:

Allan Christian Long, Jr., James A. Landay, Lawrence A. Rowe
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1776 USA

{allanl,landay,larry}@cs.berkeley.edu
+1 510 {643 7106, 643 3043, 642 5615}
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~{allanl,landay,larry}

Abstract

Interest in pen-based user interfaces is growing rapidly. One potentially useful feature of pen-based user interfaces is gestures, that is, a mark or stroke that causes a command to execute. Unfortunately, it is difficult to design gestures that are easy 1) for computers to recognize and 2) for humans to learn and remember. To investigate these problems, we built a prototype tool for designing gesture sets. An experiment was then performed to gain insight into the gesture design process and to evaluate the tool. The experiment confirmed that gesture design is very difficult and suggested several ways in which current tools can be improved. The most important of these improvements is to make the tools more active and provide more guidance for designers. This paper describes the gesture design tool, the experiment, and its results.