Gestures all around us: differences in social acceptability perceptions of gesture based interfaces

Abstract

Gesture based interfaces provide a new way for us to interact with mobile devices, but also require us to make new decisions about how we feel about this new technology and which gestures we decide are usable and appropriate. These decisions are based on the social and public settings where these devices are used on a daily basis. Our ideas about which gestures are socially acceptable or not are an important factor in whether or not these gestures will be adopted. The ways in which users evaluate social acceptability is not only highly variable, but with drastically different results amongst different users. These differences are not dependant on factors such as age, gender, occupation, geographic location, or previous technology usage. Future work into the social acceptability perceptions of users will focus on personality traits as a new way of understanding how social acceptability is determined