research-article

Push or Pinch? Exploring Slider Control Gestures for Touchless User Interfaces

Authors:

Euan FreemanAuthors Info & Claims

NordiCHI '22: Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference

Article No.: 37, Pages 1 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/3546155.3546702

Published: 08 October 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Touchless gesture interfaces enable user interaction without the need for direct physical contact. Recently there has been increased interest in deploying such interfaces over concerns about touchscreen sterility. Many touchless displays use gestures that mimic pointer-based interactions, with a ‘cursor’ mapped to finger position, that users activate by ‘pushing’ their finger forwards. Mid-air pushing with a virtual cursor is fine for discrete interactions like button activation; however, users have difficulty exerting control over continuous interactions like sliding and scrolling, because it is challenging to keep the hand at a consistent depth when gesturing. We investigate interaction techniques for slider control that use alternative mode switches between (un)pressed states. Our findings show that pinch gestures are preferred by most users and offer a faster alternative for acquiring control of sliders, as pinching has two clearly defined states and avoids the ambiguous use of depth for delineating input states.

References

[1]

Johnny Accot and Shumin Zhai. 1997. Beyond Fitts’ Law: Models for Trajectory-Based HCI Tasks. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) (CHI ’97). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 295–302. https://doi.org/10.1145/258549.258760

Digital Library

[2]

Stephen Brewster. 2002. Overcoming the lack of screen space on mobile computers. Personal and Ubiquitous computing 6, 3 (2002), 188–205. https://doi.org/10.1007/s007790200019

Digital Library

[3]

Marcus Carter, Eduardo Velloso, John Downs, Abigail Sellen, Kenton O’Hara, and Frank Vetere. 2016. PathSync: Multi-User Gestural Interaction with Touchless Rhythmic Path Mimicry. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, California, USA) (CHI ’16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 3415–3427. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858284

Digital Library

[4]

Christopher Clarke, Alessio Bellino, Augusto Esteves, Eduardo Velloso, and Hans Gellersen. 2016. TraceMatch: A Computer Vision Technique for User Input by Tracing of Animated Controls. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Heidelberg, Germany) (UbiComp ’16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 298–303. https://doi.org/10.1145/2971648.2971714

Digital Library

[5]

Christopher Clarke and Hans Gellersen. 2017. MatchPoint: Spontaneous Spatial Coupling of Body Movement for Touchless Pointing. In Proceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology(Québec City, QC, Canada) (UIST ’17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 179–192. https://doi.org/10.1145/3126594.3126626

Digital Library

[6]

Patricia Ivette Cornelio Martinez, Silvana De Pirro, Chi Thanh Vi, and Sriram Subramanian. 2017. Agency in Mid-air Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI ’17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2426–2439. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025457

Digital Library

[7]

David Coyle, James Moore, Per Ola Kristensson, Paul C. Fletcher, and Alan F. Blackwell. 2012. I did that! Measuring Users’ Experience of Agency in their own Actions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’12. ACM Press, 2025–2034. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2208350

Digital Library

[8]

Sean Cronin, Euan Freeman, and Gavin Doherty. 2022. Investigating Clutching Interactions for Touchless Medical Imaging Systems. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 14 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517512

Digital Library

[9]

Euan Freeman, Stephen Brewster, and Vuokko Lantz. 2014. Tactile Feedback for Above-Device Gesture Interfaces: Adding Touch to Touchless Interactions. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Multimodal Interaction - ICMI ’14. ACM, 419–426. https://doi.org/10.1145/2663204.2663280

Digital Library

[10]

Euan Freeman, Stephen Brewster, and Vuokko Lantz. 2016. Do That, There: An Interaction Technique for Addressing In-Air Gesture Systems. In Proceedings of the 34th Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’16. Association for Computing Machinery, 2319–2331. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858308

Digital Library

[11]

Euan Freeman, Dong-Bach Vo, and Stephen Brewster. 2019. HaptiGlow: Helping Users Position their Hands for Better Mid-Air Gestures and Ultrasound Haptic Feedback. In 2019 IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC). IEEE, 289–294. https://doi.org/10.1109/WHC.2019.8816092

[12]

Charles P. Gerba, Adam L. Wuollet, Peter Raisanen, and Gerardo U. Lopez. 2016. Bacterial contamination of computer touch screens. American Journal of Infection Control 44, 3 (2016), 358–360. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2015.10.013

[13]

Sandra G. Hart and Lowell E. Staveland. 1988. Development of NASA-TLX (Task Load Index): Results of Empirical and Theoretical Research. In Human Mental Workload, Peter A. Hancock and Najmedin Meshkati (Eds.). Advances in Psychology, Vol. 52. North-Holland, 139–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4115(08)62386-9

[14]

Khalad Hasan, David Ahlström, and Pourang Irani. 2013. Ad-Binning: Leveraging around Device Space for Storing, Browsing and Retrieving Mobile Device Content. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Paris, France) (CHI ’13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 899–908. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466115

Digital Library

[15]

Juan David Hincapié-Ramos, Xiang Guo, Paymahn Moghadasian, and Pourang Irani. 2014. Consumed Endurance: A Metric to Quantify Arm Fatigue of Mid-Air Interactions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) (CHI ’14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1063–1072. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557130

Digital Library

[16]

Intel. 2021. Intel RealSense Touchless Control Software. https://www.intelrealsense.com/introduction-to-intel-realsense-touchless-control-software Last Accessed 24/04/2022.

[17]

Raghavendra S. Kattinakere, Tovi Grossman, and Sriram Subramanian. 2007. Modeling Steering within Above-the-Surface Interaction Layers. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, California, USA) (CHI ’07). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 317–326. https://doi.org/10.1145/1240624.1240678

Digital Library

[18]

Anatole Lécuyer, Jean-Marie Burkhardt, and Laurent Etienne. 2004. Feeling bumps and holes without a haptic interface: the perception of pseudo-haptic textures. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’04, Vol. 6. 239–246. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=985723

Digital Library

[19]

Hannah Limerick. 2020. Call to interact: communicating interactivity and affordances for contactless gesture controlled public displays. In Proceedings of the 9TH ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays(PerDis ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1145/3393712.3395338

Digital Library

[20]

Ultraleap Ltd.2021. Camera Placement. https://docs.ultraleap.com/touchfree-user-manual/camera-placement.html Last Accessed 25/04/2022.

[21]

Ultraleap Ltd.2021. TouchFree For Kiosks and Digital Signage. https://www.ultraleap.com/enterprise/touchless-experiences/touchfree-solution Last Accessed 25/04/2022.

[22]

Ultraleap Ltd.2021. Touchless Interactive Kiosks: The Air Push Gesture. https://www.ultraleap.com/company/news/blog/touchless-interactions/ Last Accessed 25/04/2022.

[23]

Ville Mäkelä, Jonas Winter, Jasmin Schwab, Michael Koch, and Florian Alt. 2022. Pandemic Displays: Considering Hygiene on Public Touchscreens in the Post-Pandemic Era. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 12 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501937

Digital Library

[24]

Sylvain Malacria, Eric Lecolinet, and Yves Guiard. 2010. Clutch-Free Panning and Integrated Pan-Zoom Control on Touch-Sensitive Surfaces: The Cyclostar Approach. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) (CHI ’10). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2615–2624. https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753724

Digital Library

[25]

Regan L. Mandryk and Calvin Lough. 2011. The Effects of Intended Use on Target Acquisition. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Vancouver, BC, Canada) (CHI ’11). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1649–1652. https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979182

Digital Library

[26]

David E Meyer, Richard A Abrams, Sylvan Kornblum, Charles E Wright, and JE Keith Smith. 1988. Optimality in human motor performance: ideal control of rapid aimed movements.Psychological review 95, 3 (1988).

[27]

Ian Oakley, Marilyn Rose McGee, Stephen Brewster, and Philip Gray. 2000. Putting the Feel in ’Look and Feel‘. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (The Hague, The Netherlands) (CHI ’00). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 415–422. https://doi.org/10.1145/332040.332467

Digital Library

[28]

Jennifer Sarah Pearson, Gavin Bailey, Simon Robinson, Matt Jones, Tom Owen, Chi Zhang, Thomas Reitmaier, Cameron Steer, Anna Carter, Deepak Sahoo, and Dani Kalarikalayil Raju. 2022. Can’t Touch This: Rethinking Public Technology in a COVID-19 Era. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI ’22). https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501980

Digital Library

[29]

Henning Pohl and Roderick Murray-Smith. 2013. Focused and Casual Interactions: Allowing Users to Vary Their Level of Engagement. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Paris, France) (CHI ’13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2223–2232. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2481307

Digital Library

[30]

Ismo Rakkolainen, Euan Freeman, Antti Sand, Roope Raisamo, and Stephen Brewster. 2020. A Survey of Mid-Air Ultrasound Haptics and Its Applications. IEEE Transactions on Haptics 14 (2020), 2–19. Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2020.3018754

[31]

Malcolm E. Rodgers, Regan L. Mandryk, and Kori M. Inkpen. 2006. Smart sticky widgets: Pseudo-haptic enhancements for multi-monitor displays. In Proceedings of Smart Graphics. 194–205. http://www.springerlink.com/index/U526825K74855577.pdf

[32]

Srinath Sridhar, Anna Maria Feit, Christian Theobalt, and Antti Oulasvirta. 2015. Investigating the Dexterity of Multi-Finger Input for Mid-Air Text Entry. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Seoul, Republic of Korea) (CHI ’15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 3643–3652. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702136

Digital Library

[33]

Hemant Bhaskar Surale, Fabrice Matulic, and Daniel Vogel. 2019. Experimental Analysis of Barehand Mid-Air Mode-Switching Techniques in Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300426

Digital Library

[34]

Eduardo Velloso, Marcus Carter, Joshua Newn, Augusto Esteves, Christopher Clarke, and Hans Gellersen. 2017. Motion Correlation: Selecting Objects by Matching Their Movement. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 24, 3, Article 22 (apr 2017), 35 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3064937

Digital Library

[35]

Dong-Bach Vo and Stephen Brewster. 2015. Touching the Invisible: Localizing Ultrasonic Haptic Cues. In Proceedings of World Haptics Conference 2015 - WHC ’15. IEEE, 368 – 373. https://doi.org/10.1109/WHC.2015.7177740

[36]

Kieran Waugh, Mark McGill, and Euan Freeman. 2022. User Study Data for “Push or Pinch? Exploring Slider Control Gestures for Touchless User Interfaces”. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6779013

[37]

Kieran Waugh and Judy Robertson. 2021. Don’t Touch Me! A Comparison of Usability on Touch and Non-touch Inputs. In Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021, Carmelo Ardito, Rosa Lanzilotti, Alessio Malizia, Helen Petrie, Antonio Piccinno, Giuseppe Desolda, and Kori Inkpen (Eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 400–404.

Digital Library

[38]

Andrew D. Wilson. 2006. Robust Computer Vision-Based Detection of Pinching for One and Two-Handed Gesture Input. In Proceedings of the 19th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Montreux, Switzerland) (UIST ’06). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 255–258. https://doi.org/10.1145/1166253.1166292

Digital Library

[39]

Regine Zopf, Vince Polito, and James Moore. 2018. Revisiting the link between body and agency: Visual movement congruency enhances intentional binding but is not body-specific. Scientific Reports 8, 1 (2018), Article 196. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18492-7

Cited By

Liu ZLi CLin JXu HXu YNan HCheng WLi JWang B(2024)Advances in the development and application of non-contact intraoperative image access systemsBioMedical Engineering OnLine10.1186/s12938-024-01304-123:1Online publication date: 30-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12938-024-01304-1
Waugh KMcGill MFreeman E(2023)Demonstrating Proxemic Cursor Input for Touchless DisplaysProceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/3607822.3618014(1-2)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607822.3618014
Waugh KMcGill MFreeman E(2023)Proxemic Cursor Interactions for Touchless Widget ControlProceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/3607822.3614525(1-12)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607822.3614525
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Push or Pinch? Exploring Slider Control Gestures for Touchless User Interfaces
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction techniques
      1. Gestural input

Recommendations

Proxemic Cursor Interactions for Touchless Widget Control
SUI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction

Touchless gesture interfaces often use cursor-based interactions, where widgets are targeted by a movable cursor and activated with a mid-air gesture (e.g., push or Pinch). Continuous interactions like slider manipulation can be challenging in mid-air ...
Demonstrating Proxemic Cursor Input for Touchless Displays
SUI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction

Touchless gesture interfaces often use cursor-based interactions, where widgets are targeted by a movable cursor and activated with a mid-air gesture. Proxemic cursor interactions are a novel alternative that facilitate faster selection without the need ...
Touchless circular menus: toward an intuitive UI for touchless interactions with large displays
AVI '14: Proceedings of the 2014 International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces

Researchers are exploring touchless interactions in diverse usage contexts. These include interacting with public displays, where mouse and keyboards are inconvenient, activating kitchen devices without touching them with dirty hands, or supporting ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

NordiCHI '22: Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference

October 2022

1091 pages

ISBN:9781450396998

DOI:10.1145/3546155

Copyright © 2022 ACM.

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 the author(s) 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: 08 October 2022

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

NordiCHI '22

NordiCHI '22: Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference

October 8 - 12, 2022

Aarhus, Denmark

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 379 of 1,572 submissions, 24%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

4
Total Citations
View Citations
218
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)89
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)6

Reflects downloads up to 09 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Liu ZLi CLin JXu HXu YNan HCheng WLi JWang B(2024)Advances in the development and application of non-contact intraoperative image access systemsBioMedical Engineering OnLine10.1186/s12938-024-01304-123:1Online publication date: 30-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12938-024-01304-1
Waugh KMcGill MFreeman E(2023)Demonstrating Proxemic Cursor Input for Touchless DisplaysProceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/3607822.3618014(1-2)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607822.3618014
Waugh KMcGill MFreeman E(2023)Proxemic Cursor Interactions for Touchless Widget ControlProceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/3607822.3614525(1-12)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607822.3614525
Kazhura MVorhof BValdez A(2023)Affordance-Guided User Elicitation of Interaction Concepts for Unimodal Gaze Control of Potential Holographic 3D UIs in Automotive Applications2023 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct)10.1109/ISMAR-Adjunct60411.2023.00011(14-19)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMAR-Adjunct60411.2023.00011

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.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents