Tickle: a surface-independent interaction technique for grasp interfaces

We present a wearable interface that consists of motion sensors. As the interface can be worn on the user's fingers (as a ring) or fixed to it (with nail polish), the device controlled by finger gestures can be any generic object, provided they have an interface for receiving the sensor's signal. We implemented four gestures: tap, release, swipe, and pitch, all of which can be executed with a finger of the hand holding the device. In a user study we tested gesture appropriateness for the index finger at the back of a handheld tablet that offered three different form factors on its rear: flat, convex, and concave (undercut). For all three shapes, the gesture performance was equally good, however pitch performed better on all surfaces than swipe. The proposed interface is an example towards the idea of ubiquitous computing and the vision of seamless interactions with grasped objects. As an initial application scenario we implemented a camera control that allows the brightness to be configured using our tested gestures on a common SLR device.