Accelerometer-based single-handed video browsing on mobile devices: design and user studies

People are now watching videos on an ever-expanding variety of mobile devices more often than ever before. Most mobile video browsing mechanisms are designed for two-handed cases. However, we observe that in many situations (e.g., on the bus, eating and drinking, and so on) people only have one hand free to hold their personal devices to watch videos. This paper presents a natural way to interact with mobile videos using single hand. Taking advantage of accelerometer, we design a novel approach and interface to browse video content with one-handed gestures. Specifically, we conduct a focus study to summarize the desired features for mobile video browsing. Based on the study, we then design a set of mapping functions which leverage video content analysis to associate typical video browsing behaviors (e.g., fast forwarding, rewinding, positioning, etc.) with natural accelerometer operations (e.g., tilting and shaking). Evaluation on a group study indicates that this new design provides a natural user experience for single-handed video navigation, and therefore an effective complement to existing video browsing mechanisms on mobile devices.