Touch input on curved surfaces

Advances in sensing technology are currently bringing touch input to non-planar surfaces, ranging from spherical touch screens to prototypes the size and shape of a ping-pong ball. To help interface designers create usable interfaces on such devices, we determine how touch surface curvature affects targeting. We present a user study in which participants acquired targets on surfaces of different curvature and at locations of different slope. We find that surface convexity increases pointing accuracy, and in particular reduces the offset between the input point perceived by users and the input point sensed by the device. Concave surfaces, in contrast, are subject to larger error offsets. This is likely caused by how concave surfaces hug the user's finger, thus resulting in a larger contact area. The effect of slope on targeting, in contrast, is unexpected at first sight. Some targets located downhill from the user's perspective are subject to error offsets in the opposite direction from all others. This appears to be caused by participants acquiring these targets using a different finger posture that lets them monitor the position of their fingers more effectively.