Exploring Visual Cues for Intuitive Communicability of Touch Gestures to Pre-kindergarten Children

Pre-kindergarten children are becoming frequent users of multi-touch technology and, according to previous studies they are able to perform several multi-touch gestures successfully. However, they do not use these devices supervised at all times. Consequently, interactive applications for pre-kindergarteners need to convey their underlying design intent and interactive principles with respect to touch interaction. In this paper, we present and evaluate two approaches to communicate three different touch gestures (tap, drag and scale up) to pre-kindergarten users. Our results show, firstly, that it is possible to effectively communicate them using visual cues and, secondly, that an animated semiotic approach is better than an iconic one.