research-article

Understanding performance of eyes-free, absolute position control on touchable mobile phones

Authors:

Yuntao Wang,

Chun Yu,

Jie Liu,

Yuanchun ShiAuthors Info & Claims

MobileHCI '13: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services

Pages 79 - 88

https://doi.org/10.1145/2493190.2493215

Published: 27 August 2013 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

Many eyes-free interaction techniques have been proposed for touchscreens, but few researches have studied human's eyes-free pointing ability with mobile phones. In this paper, we investigate the single-handed thumb performance of eyes-free, absolute position control on mobile touch screens. Both 1D and 2D experiments were conducted. We explored the effects of target size and location on eyes-free touch patterns and accuracy. Our findings show that variance of touch points per target will converge as target size decreases. The centroid of touch points per target tends to be offset to the left of target center along horizontal direction, and shift toward screen center along vertical direction. Average accuracy drops from 99.6% of 2×2 layout to 85.0% of 4×4 layout, and average per target varies depending on the location of target. Our findings and design implications provide a foundation for future researches based on eyes-free, absolute position control using thumb on mobile devices.

References

[1]

Azenkot, S. and Zhai, S. Touch behavior with different postures on soft smartphone keyboards. In Proc. MobileHCI 2012, 251--260.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[2]

Bonner, M. N., Brudvik, J. T., Abowd, G. D., and Edwards, W., No-Look Notes: Accessible eyes-free multi-touch text entry. Pervasive Computing, 409--426.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

Bragdon, A., Nelson, E., Li, Y., and Hinckley, K., Experimental analysis of touch-screen gesture designs in mobile environments. In Proc. CHI 2011, 403--412.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

Findlater, L., Wobbrock, J. O., and Wigdor, D., Typing on flat glass: examining ten-finger expert typing patterns on touch surfaces. In Proc. CHI 2011, 2453--2462.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[5]

Henze, N., Rukzio, E., and Boll, S. 100,000,000 taps: analysis and improvement of touch performance in the large. In Proc. MobileHCI '11, 133--142.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[6]

Holz, C. and Baudisch, P. The Generalized Perceived Input Point Model and How to Double Touch Accuracy by Extracting Fingerprints. In Proc. CHI'10, 581--590.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

Holz, C. and Baudisch, P. Understanding Touch. In Proc. CHI'11, 2501--2510.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[8]

iSuppli. Touch-Screen Shipments Expected to reach 833 Million by 2013, '08.

Google Scholar

[9]

Jain, M., and Balakrishnan, R. User learning and performance with bezel menus. In proc. CHI 2012 2221--2230.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[10]

Karlson, A. K., Bederson, B. B. and Cotreras-Viidal, J. L., Understanding single-handed mobile device interaction. Technical report. University of Maryland at College Park.

Google Scholar

[11]

Li, K. A., Baudisch, P., and Hinckley, K., Blindsight: eyes-free access to mobile phones. In Proc. CHI 2008, 1389--1398.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[12]

MacKenzie, I. S. and Buxton, W., Extending Fitts' law to two-dimensional tasks. In proc. CHI'92, 219--226.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[13]

MacKenzie, I. S., Kauppinen, T., and Silfverberg, M., Accuracy Measures for Evaluating Computer Pointing Devices. In Proc. CHI'01, 9--16.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[14]

Matthieu B. T., Justin G. Y., Devin L. J., Jack T. D., Thumb motor performance varies with thumb and wrist posture during single-handed mobile phone use. Journal of Biomechanics, Vol. 45, No. 14, September 2012, 2349--2354.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[15]

Matthieu, B. T., Tawan, U., Amy, K. K. and Jack, T. D. Thumb motor performance varies by movement orientation, direction, and device size during single-handed mobile phone use. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Vol. 54, No. 1, February 2012, 52--59.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[16]

Paisios, N., Rubinsteyn, A., and Subramanian, L., Mobile brailler: Making touch-screen typing accessible to visually impaired users. In Workshop on Frontiers in Accessibility for Pervasive Computing. 2012.

Google Scholar

[17]

Parhi, P., Karlson, A. K. and Benderson, B. B. Target size study for one-handed thumb use on small touchscreen devices. In proc. MobileHCI 2006, 203--210.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[18]

Perry, K. B., and Juan P. H., Evaluating one handed thumb tapping on mobile touchscreen devices. In Proceedings of graphics interface 2008, 57--64.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[19]

Romero, M., Frey, B., Southern, C., and Abowd, G. D., BrailleTouch: designing a mobile eyes-free soft keyboard. In Proc. MobileHCI 2011, 707--709.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[20]

Roth, V., and Turner, T., Bezel swipe: conflict-free scrolling and multiple selection on mobile touch screen devices. In Proc. CHI 2009, 1523--1526.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[21]

Wigdor, D., and Balakrishnan, R., A comparison of consecutive and concurrent input text entry techniques for mobile phones. In Proc. CHI 2004, 81--88.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[22]

Yi, B., Cao, X., Fjeld, M., and Zhao, S., Exploring User Motivations for Eyes-free Interaction on Mobile Devices. In Proc. CHI 2012, 2789--2792.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[23]

Yong, S. P., Sung, H. H., Touch key design for one-handed thumb interaction with a mobile phone: effects of touch key size and touch key location. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, Vol. 40, No. 1, January 2010, 68--76.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[24]

Yong, S. P., Sung, H. H, Jaehyun, P. and Youngseok, C. Touch key design for target selection on a mobile phone. In proc. MobileHCI 2008, 423--426.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Terenti MCasado-Palacios MGori MVatavu R(2024)What Is the User Experience of Eyes-Free Touch Input with Vibrotactile Feedback Decoupled from the Touchscreen?Extended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650804(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3650804
Kang ETjolleng AYu HJung KChang J(2023)Investigation into Touch Performance on a QWERTY Soft Keyboard on a Smartphone: Touch Time, Accuracy, and Satisfaction in Two-Thumb Key EntryApplied Sciences10.3390/app1311682513:11(6825)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/app13116825
Iwasaki MHara SAbe M(2023)Speech Synthesis Using Ambiguous Inputs From Wearable Keyboards2023 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC)10.1109/APSIPAASC58517.2023.10317228(1172-1178)Online publication date: 31-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/APSIPAASC58517.2023.10317228
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Understanding performance of eyes-free, absolute position control on touchable mobile phones
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

Recommendations

Understanding back-to-front pinching for eyes-free mobile touch input
MobileHCI '16: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services

Using a smartphone touchscreen to control apps mirrored to a distant display is hard, since the user cannot see where she is touching while looking at the distant screen. Tactile landmarks at the back of the phone can mitigate this problem, especially ...
Multilevel auditory displays for mobile eyes-free location-based interaction
CHI EA '14: CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

This paper explores the use of multilevel auditory displays to enable eyes-free mobile interaction with location-based information in a conceptual art exhibition space. Multilevel auditory displays enable user interaction with concentrated areas of ...
Eyes-free graph legibility: using skin-dragging to provide a tactile graph visualization on the arm
AH '20: Proceedings of the 11th Augmented Human International Conference

Recent technological advances have enabled novel tactile displays which have mainly focused on providing shorter sensations for notifications and/or simple messages. These have been primarily been used to enhance the user experience. In contrast, ...

Reviews

Reviewer: Debraj De

Smartphones and tablets are becoming indispensable to many different types of people's daily lives. These touchscreen devices, however, generally require visual attention. Some work is emerging in the literature on the subject of eyes-free interaction with mobile devices. In addition to voice input, some researchers are exploring the possibility of eyes-free touch-based interaction. This paper focuses on analyzing the performance accuracy and the important factors of eyes-free single-handed thumb interactions. The experiment and analysis in this work include some relatively obvious conclusions. For example, there is a Gaussian distribution of touch point locations; the variance of touch points is higher with eyes-free interaction than with visual attention; and accuracy drops when the touch target size is smaller. But the work also includes some interesting observations. The authors note that touch point location variance is significantly smaller on the x-axis (horizontal direction) than on the y-axis (vertical direction); the centroid of touch points per target offset to the target center's left along horizontal direction and to the center of the screen along vertical direction; and touch targets on the top-left side of the screen have the worst accuracy. The work first describes in detail the different literature on human interaction accuracy on touchscreens. It also describes the motivation and research questions behind the eyes-free interaction study. The experiments are done with 1D targets and 2D targets on the screen, and the study is performed with a significant number of users and collected datasets. The collected datasets are presented and analyzed in detail, and studied for performance factors such as distribution of touch point positions per target, touch accuracy, and the offset and variance of touch points. Overall, this paper is useful. The key observations on touch accuracy can serve as a foundation for future studies and various applications of eyes-free touch controls. Online Computing Reviews Service

Access critical reviews of Computing literature here

Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

MobileHCI '13: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services

August 2013

662 pages

ISBN:9781450322737

DOI:10.1145/2493190

General Chairs:
Michael Rohs
University of Hannover, Germany
,
Albrecht Schmidt
University of Stuttgart, Germany
,
Program Chairs:
Daniel Ashbrook
Samsung, USA
,
Enrico Rukzio
University of Ulm, Germany and Lancaster University, UK

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 August 2013

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

MobileHCI '13

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

MobileHCI '13: 15th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services

August 27 - 30, 2013

Munich, Germany

Acceptance Rates

MobileHCI '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 53 of 238 submissions, 22%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 202 of 906 submissions, 22%

Upcoming Conference

MobileHCI '24

Sponsor:
sigchi

26th International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction

September 30 - October 3, 2024

Melbourne , VIC , Australia

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

18
Total Citations
View Citations
632
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)11
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 21 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Terenti MCasado-Palacios MGori MVatavu R(2024)What Is the User Experience of Eyes-Free Touch Input with Vibrotactile Feedback Decoupled from the Touchscreen?Extended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650804(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3650804
Kang ETjolleng AYu HJung KChang J(2023)Investigation into Touch Performance on a QWERTY Soft Keyboard on a Smartphone: Touch Time, Accuracy, and Satisfaction in Two-Thumb Key EntryApplied Sciences10.3390/app1311682513:11(6825)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/app13116825
Iwasaki MHara SAbe M(2023)Speech Synthesis Using Ambiguous Inputs From Wearable Keyboards2023 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC)10.1109/APSIPAASC58517.2023.10317228(1172-1178)Online publication date: 31-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/APSIPAASC58517.2023.10317228
Sun AWang LLeng JKei Im S(2023)Light-Occlusion Text Entry in Mixed RealityInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2023.2285646(1-16)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2023.2285646
Wang YYu AYi XZhang YChatterjee IPatel SShi YKitamura YQuigley AIsbister KIgarashi TBjørn PDrucker S(2021)Facilitating Text Entry on Smartphones with QWERTY Keyboard for Users with Parkinson’s DiseaseProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445352(1-12)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411764.3445352
Akpinar EYeşilada YTemizer S(2020)The Effect of Context on Small Screen and Wearable Device Users’ Performance - A Systematic ReviewACM Computing Surveys10.1145/338637053:3(1-44)Online publication date: 28-May-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386370
Yang ZYu CYi XShi Y(2019)Investigating Gesture Typing for Indirect TouchProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/33512753:3(1-22)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3351275
Maiero JEibich DKruijff EHinkenjann AStuerzlinger WBenko HGhinea G(2019)Back-of-Device Force Feedback Improves Touchscreen Interaction for Mobile DevicesIEEE Transactions on Haptics10.1109/TOH.2019.291151912:4(483-496)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2019.2911519
Kim JDelamare WIrani PBatty CReilly D(2018)ThumbText: Text Entry for Wearable Devices Using a Miniature RingProceedings of the 44th Graphics Interface Conference10.20380/GI2018.04(18-25)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.20380/GI2018.04
Lu YYu CYi XShi YZhao S(2017)BlindTypeProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/30900831:2(1-24)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3090083
Show More Cited By

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Understanding back-to-front pinching for eyes-free mobile touch input

Multilevel auditory displays for mobile eyes-free location-based interaction

Eyes-free graph legibility: using skin-dragging to provide a tactile graph visualization on the arm

Reviews

Access critical reviews of Computing literature here