Empirical evaluation for finger input properties in multi-touch interaction

ABSTRACT

Current multi-touch interaction techniques typically only use the x-y coordinates of the human finger's contact with the screen. However, when fingers contact a touch-sensitive surface, they usually approach at an angle and cover a relatively large 2D area instead of a precise single point. In this paper, a Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR) based multi-touch device is used to collect the finger imprint data. We designed a series of experiments to explore human finger input properties and identified several useful properties such as contact area, contact shape and contact orientation which can be exploited to improve the performance of multi-touch selecting and pointing tasks. Based on the experimental results, we discuss some implications for the design of human finger input interfaces and propose several design prototypes which incorporate these implications. A set of raw data and several concrete recommendations which are useful for the research community are also presented.

REFERENCES

• 1: Pär-Anders Albinsson , Shumin Zhai, High precision touch screen interaction, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642631]
• 2: Anderson, R.E. Social impacts of computing: Codes of professional ethics. Social Science Computer Review, 4 (1992), 453--469.
• 3: APPLE. Multi-touch gesture dictionary (2008). US Patent 20070177803
• 4: Hrvoje Benko , Andrew D. Wilson , Patrick Baudisch, Precise selection techniques for multi-touch screens, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems, April 22-27, 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada [doi>10.1145/1124772.1124963]
• 5: Buxton, W. Multi-touch systems that i have known and loved (2008). http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
• 6: William Buxton , Ralph Hill , Peter Rowley, Issues and techniques in touch-sensitive tablet input, Proceedings of the 12th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.215-224, July 1985
• 7: Paul Dietz , Darren Leigh, DiamondTouch: a multi-user touch technology, Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, November 11-14, 2001, Orlando, Florida [doi>10.1145/502348.502389]
• 8: Clifton Forlines , Daniel Wigdor , Chia Shen , Ravin Balakrishnan, Direct-touch vs. mouse input for tabletop displays, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 28-May 03, 2007, San Jose, California, USA [doi>10.1145/1240624.1240726]
• 9: Hall, A.D., Cunningham, J.B., Roache, R.P., and Cox, J.W. Factors affecting performance using touch-entry systems: Tactual recognition fields and system accuracy. Journal of Applied Psychology, 4 (1988), 711--720.
• 10: Jefferson Y. Han, Low-cost multi-touch sensing through frustrated total internal reflection, Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, October 23-26, 2005, Seattle, WA, USA [doi>10.1145/1095034.1095054]
• 11: Christopher F. Herot , Guy Weinzapfel, One-point touch input of vector information for computer displays, Proceedings of the 5th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.210-216, August 23-25, 1978
• 12: Paul Kabbash , William A. S. Buxton, The “prince” technique: Fitts' law and selection using area cursors, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.273-279, May 07-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado, United States [doi>10.1145/223904.223939]
• 13: Kaltenbrunner, M., Bovermann, T., Bencina, R., and Costanza, E. Tuio - a protocol for table based tangible user interfaces. In 6th International Workshop on Gesture in Human-Computer Interaction and Simulation, 2005.
• 14: SK Lee , William Buxton , K. C. Smith, A multi-touch three dimensional touch-sensitive tablet, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.21-25, April 1985, San Francisco, California, United States
• 15: Nuigroup. Touchlib: A multi-touch development kit (2008). http://nuigroup.com/touchlib/
• 16: Patwardhan, A. Subpixel position measurement using 1d, 2d and 3d centroid algorithms with emphasis on applications in confocal microscopy. Journal of Microscopy, 3 (1997), 246--257.
• 17: R. L. Potter , L. J. Weldon , B. Shneiderman, Improving the accuracy of touch screens: an experimental evaluation of three strategies, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.27-32, May 15-19, 1988, Washington, D.C., United States [doi>10.1145/57167.57171]
• 18: Gonzalo Ramos , Matthew Boulos , Ravin Balakrishnan, Pressure widgets, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.487-494, April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria [doi>10.1145/985692.985754]
• 19: Adrian Reetz , Carl Gutwin , Tadeusz Stach , Miguel Nacenta , Sriram Subramanian, Superflick: a natural and efficient technique for long-distance object placement on digital tables, Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2006, June 07-09, 2006, Quebec, Canada
• 20: Jun Rekimoto, SmartSkin: an infrastructure for freehand manipulation on interactive surfaces, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/503376.503397]
• 21: Andrew Sears , Ben Shneiderman, High precision touchscreens: design strategies and comparisons with a mouse, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, v.34 n.4, p.593-613, April 1991 [doi>10.1016/0020-7373(91)90037-8]
• 22: SMART. Smart technologies inc. (2008). http://www.smarttech.com
• 23: Daniel Vogel , Patrick Baudisch, Shift: a technique for operating pen-based interfaces using touch, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 28-May 03, 2007, San Jose, California, USA [doi>10.1145/1240624.1240727]
• 24: Andrew D. Wilson, TouchLight: an imaging touch screen and display for gesture-based interaction, Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Multimodal interfaces, October 13-15, 2004, State College, PA, USA [doi>10.1145/1027933.1027946]
• 25: Andrew D. Wilson, PlayAnywhere: a compact interactive tabletop projection-vision system, Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, October 23-26, 2005, Seattle, WA, USA [doi>10.1145/1095034.1095047]
• 26: Andrew D. Wilson , Shahram Izadi , Otmar Hilliges , Armando Garcia-Mendoza , David Kirk, Bringing physics to the surface, Proceedings of the 21st annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, October 19-22, 2008, Monterey, CA, USA [doi>10.1145/1449715.1449728]
• 27: Mike Wu , Ravin Balakrishnan, Multi-finger and whole hand gestural interaction techniques for multi-user tabletop displays, Proceedings of the 16th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.193-202, November 02-05, 2003, Vancouver, Canada [doi>10.1145/964696.964718]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Input devices and strategies (e.g., mouse, touchscreen)

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
area, empirical evaluation, finger input property, multi-touch technique, orientation, shape