It Made More Sense: Comparison of User-Elicited On-skin Touch and Freehand Gesture Sets

Research on gestural control interfaces is getting more widespread for the purpose of creating natural interfaces. Two of these popular gesture types are freehand and on-skin touch gestures, because they eliminate the use of an intermediary device. Previous studies investigated these modalities separately with user-elicitation methods; however, there is a gap in the field considering their comparison. In this study, we compare user-elicited on-skin touch and freehand gesture sets to explore users’ preferences. Thus, we conducted an experiment in which we compare 13 gestures to control computer tasks for each set. Eighteen young adults participated in our study and filled our survey consisted of NASA Task Load Index and 4 additional items of social acceptability, learnability, memorability, and the goodness. The results show that on-skin touch gestures were less physically demanding and more socially acceptable compared to freehand gestures. On the other hand, freehand gestures were more intuitive than on-skin touch gestures. Overall, our results suggest that different gesture types could be useful in different scenarios. Our contribution to the field might inspire designers and developers to make better judgments for designing new gestural interfaces for a variety of devices.

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