Towards the design of effective freehand gestural interaction for interactive TV

As interactive devices become pervasive, people are beginning to look for more advanced interaction with televisions in the living room. Interactive television has the potential to offer a very engaging experience. But most common user tasks are still challenging with such systems, such as menu selection or text input, and little work has been done on understanding and supporting the effective design of freehand interaction with a TV in the domestic environment. In this paper, we report two studies investigating freehand gestural interaction with a consumer level sensor that is suitable for TV use scenarios. In the first study, we investigate a range of design factors for tiled layout menu selection, including wearable feedback, push gesture depth, target size and position in motor space. The results show that tactile and audio feedback have no significant effect on user performance and preference, and these results inform potential designs for high selection performance. In the second study, we investigate using freehand gestures for the common TV user task of text input. We design and evaluate two virtual keyboard layouts and three freehand selection methods. Results show that ease of use and error tolerance can both be achieved using a text entry method utilizing a dual circle layout and an expanding target selection technique. Finally, we propose design guidelines for effective, usable and comfortable freehand gestural interaction for interactive TV based on the findings.</p

Towards the design of effective freehand gestural interaction for interactive TV

As interactive devices become pervasive, people are beginning to looking for more advanced interaction with televisions in the living room. Interactive television has the potential to offer a very engaging experience. But most common user tasks are still challenging with such systems, such as menu selection or text input. And little work has been done on understanding and sup-porting the effective design of freehand interaction with an TV in the living room. In this paper, we perform two studies investi-gating freehand gestural interaction with a consumer level sensor, which is suitable for TV scenarios. In the first study, we inves-tigate a range of design factors for tiled layout menu selection, including wearable feedback, push gesture depth, target size and position in motor space. The results show that tactile and audio feedback have no significant effect on performance and prefer-ence, and these results inform potential designs for high selection performance. In the second study, we investigate a common TV user task of text input using freehand gesture. We design and evaluate two virtual keyboard layouts and three freehand selec-tion methods. Results show that ease of use and error tolerance can be both achieved using a text entry method utilizing a dual circle layout and an expanding target selection technique. Finally, we propose design guidelines for effective, usable and com-fortable freehand gestural interaction for interactive TV based on the findings.Comment: Preprint version of our paper accepted by Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy System

Tekstinsyöttö katseella – Pitkittäistutkimus nopeasta tekstinsyötöstä katseella

Dasher on suhteellisen uusi tekstinsyöttöohjelma, jota voi ohjata monilla eri syöttölaitteilla, mm. katseenseurantalaitteella ja hiirellä. Sillä on tähän mennessä kuitenkin suoritettu varsin vähän käyttäjätutkimuksia. Tässä tutkielmassa esitellään pitkittäistutkimus, joka suoritettiin Tampereen yliopistossa Tietojenkäsittelytieteiden laitoksen katselaboratoriossa kesäkuussa 2007. Tutkimukseen osallistui 12 vapaaehtoista yliopisto-opiskelijaa. Heistä jokainen kirjoitti Dasherilla katseella kymmenen viidentoista minuutin pituista tutkimuskertaa, yhteensä kaksi ja puoli tuntia. Lisäksi jokainen osallistuja kirjoitti kymmenennellä tutkimuskerralla Dasherilla hiirellä 15 minuuttia. Tutkimuksessa käytettiin Tobii 1750 katseenseurantalaitetta. Ensimmäisen tutkimuskerran kaikkien osallistujien kirjoitusnopeuden keskiarvo oli 2,5 sanaa minuutissa, ja kymmenennen tutkimuskerran keskiarvo oli 17,3 sanaa minuutissa. Tutkimuksen päätyttyä nopeus oli yhä kasvussa. Tulokset osoittavat, että Dasherilla pystyy kirjoittamaan katseella hyvinkin suurella nopeudella, mutta maksiminopeuden saavuttaminen vaatii pidemmän ajan kuin tähän tutkimukseen käytetty aika. Avainsanat ja -sanonnat: katse, katseenseuranta, tekstinsyöttö katseella, pitkittäistutkimu

Beginners Performance with MessagEase and QWERTY

With the increased use of mobile phones, interest in text entry with them has also amplified. Many new mobile phones are equipped with a QWERTY keypad; new methods to surpass the QWERTY performance are also being developed. This thesis compares user performance of virtual QWERTY keypad to MessagEase. MessagEase uses 9 keys and can therefore be used even on very small touch displays. 9 characters are entered with tapping and the rest with a tap-and-slide gesture. An experiment was conducted with 10 participants transcribing text with both text entry techniques. The experiment consisted of three sessions. In each session, the participants transcribed 30 phrases in total - 15 phrases using each text entry technique. Responses to the System Usability Scale (SUS) for each text entry technique and informal interview data were also collected. From a Repeated-measures analysis of variance a significant effect of the text entry method on text entry rate was seen (F1,19= 47.140, p < 0.0001). The effect of the session (i.e. learning) was also statistically significant (F2,18= 3.631, p = 0.047).The interaction of the session and method was also statistically significant (F2,18= 10.286, p = 0.001) indicating different learning rates. Average text entry speed with MessagEase was 7.43 words per minute (wpm) in the first session and 10.96 wpm in the third session. Likewise, text entry speed with the QWERTY soft keyboard was 17.75 wpm in the first session and 17.16 wpm in the third session. No significant difference was found in the error rates. Keywords: text entry method, MessagEase, QWERT

Optimizing Human Performance in Mobile Text Entry

Although text entry on mobile phones is abundant, research strives to achieve desktop typing performance "on the go". But how can researchers evaluate new and existing mobile text entry techniques? How can they ensure that evaluations are conducted in a consistent manner that facilitates comparison? What forms of input are possible on a mobile device? Do the audio and haptic feedback options with most touchscreen keyboards affect performance? What influences users' preference for one feedback or another? Can rearranging the characters and keys of a keyboard improve performance? This dissertation answers these questions and more. The developed TEMA software allows researchers to evaluate mobile text entry methods in an easy, detailed, and consistent manner. Many in academia and industry have adopted it. TEMA was used to evaluate a typical QWERTY keyboard with multiple options for audio and haptic feedback. Though feedback did not have a significant effect on performance, a survey revealed that users' choice of feedback is influenced by social and technical factors. Another study using TEMA showed that novice users entered text faster using a tapping technique than with a gesture or handwriting technique. This motivated rearranging the keys and characters to create a new keyboard, MIME, that would provide better performance for expert users. Data on character frequency and key selection times were gathered and used to design MIME. A longitudinal user study using TEMA revealed an entry speed of 17 wpm and a total error rate of 1.7% for MIME, compared to 23 wpm and 5.2% for QWERTY. Although MIME's entry speed did not surpass QWERTY's during the study, it is projected to do so after twelve hours of practice. MIME's error rate was consistently low and significantly lower than QWERTY's. In addition, participants found MIME more comfortable to use, with some reporting hand soreness after using QWERTY for extended periods

Quikwriting as a multi-device text entry method

part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Publications Dept, ACM Inc., fax +1 (212) 869-0481, or [email protected]. Quikwriting as a Multi-Device Text Entry Method Quikwriting is a previously published technique for entering text into computers using a stylus. We report results of a longitudinal study on user performance with it. In addition to the original stylus-based usage mode we designed modes for joystick and keyboard thus making Quikwriting compatible with a wide range of computing devices. Twelve participants used the stylus and joystick modes in 20 sessions for a total of ten hours. By the end of the experiment their text entry rate was 16 wpm in the stylus mode and 13 wpm in the joystick mode. At the end we conducted a test to verify that Quikwriting skill transfers to the keyboard mode. Text entry rate for the first five minutes of use in the keyboard mode was 6 wpm. In summary, the stylus mode was not particularly fast, but we found Quikwriting suitable for multi-device use. Author Keywords stylus, keyboard, joystick, gamepad, game controller

Enhanced Virtuality: Increasing the Usability and Productivity of Virtual Environments

Mit stetig steigender Bildschirmauflösung, genauerem Tracking und fallenden Preisen stehen Virtual Reality (VR) Systeme kurz davor sich erfolgreich am Markt zu etablieren. Verschiedene Werkzeuge helfen Entwicklern bei der Erstellung komplexer Interaktionen mit mehreren Benutzern innerhalb adaptiver virtueller Umgebungen. Allerdings entstehen mit der Verbreitung der VR-Systeme auch zusätzliche Herausforderungen: Diverse Eingabegeräte mit ungewohnten Formen und Tastenlayouts verhindern eine intuitive Interaktion. Darüber hinaus zwingt der eingeschränkte Funktionsumfang bestehender Software die Nutzer dazu, auf herkömmliche PC- oder Touch-basierte Systeme zurückzugreifen. Außerdem birgt die Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Anwendern am gleichen Standort Herausforderungen hinsichtlich der Kalibrierung unterschiedlicher Trackingsysteme und der Kollisionsvermeidung. Beim entfernten Zusammenarbeiten wird die Interaktion durch Latenzzeiten und Verbindungsverluste zusätzlich beeinflusst. Schließlich haben die Benutzer unterschiedliche Anforderungen an die Visualisierung von Inhalten, z.B. Größe, Ausrichtung, Farbe oder Kontrast, innerhalb der virtuellen Welten. Eine strikte Nachbildung von realen Umgebungen in VR verschenkt Potential und wird es nicht ermöglichen, die individuellen Bedürfnisse der Benutzer zu berücksichtigen. Um diese Probleme anzugehen, werden in der vorliegenden Arbeit Lösungen in den Bereichen Eingabe, Zusammenarbeit und Erweiterung von virtuellen Welten und Benutzern vorgestellt, die darauf abzielen, die Benutzerfreundlichkeit und Produktivität von VR zu erhöhen. Zunächst werden PC-basierte Hardware und Software in die virtuelle Welt übertragen, um die Vertrautheit und den Funktionsumfang bestehender Anwendungen in VR zu erhalten. Virtuelle Stellvertreter von physischen Geräten, z.B. Tastatur und Tablet, und ein VR-Modus für Anwendungen ermöglichen es dem Benutzer reale Fähigkeiten in die virtuelle Welt zu übertragen. Des Weiteren wird ein Algorithmus vorgestellt, der die Kalibrierung mehrerer ko-lokaler VR-Geräte mit hoher Genauigkeit und geringen Hardwareanforderungen und geringem Aufwand ermöglicht. Da VR-Headsets die reale Umgebung der Benutzer ausblenden, wird die Relevanz einer Ganzkörper-Avatar-Visualisierung für die Kollisionsvermeidung und das entfernte Zusammenarbeiten nachgewiesen. Darüber hinaus werden personalisierte räumliche oder zeitliche Modifikationen vorgestellt, die es erlauben, die Benutzerfreundlichkeit, Arbeitsleistung und soziale Präsenz von Benutzern zu erhöhen. Diskrepanzen zwischen den virtuellen Welten, die durch persönliche Anpassungen entstehen, werden durch Methoden der Avatar-Umlenkung (engl. redirection) kompensiert. Abschließend werden einige der Methoden und Erkenntnisse in eine beispielhafte Anwendung integriert, um deren praktische Anwendbarkeit zu verdeutlichen. Die vorliegende Arbeit zeigt, dass virtuelle Umgebungen auf realen Fähigkeiten und Erfahrungen aufbauen können, um eine vertraute und einfache Interaktion und Zusammenarbeit von Benutzern zu gewährleisten. Darüber hinaus ermöglichen individuelle Erweiterungen des virtuellen Inhalts und der Avatare Einschränkungen der realen Welt zu überwinden und das Erlebnis von VR-Umgebungen zu steigern

Méthodologie et instrumentalisation pour la conception et l'évaluation des claviers logiciels

Avec l'expansion des dispositifs mobiles, l'efficacité de la saisie de texte est un défi de plus en plus important pour l'interaction homme-machine. Or, nous observons que, bien que les claviers type AZERTY ou téléphone, traditionnellement utilisés sur ces supports, soient évalués comme sous-optimaux, et, bien que de nombreuses alternatives évaluées comme plus performantes soient proposées dans la littérature, ces nouvelles alternatives restent très marginalement utilisées. Sur la base de cette observation, nous argumentons que la finalité des évaluations ne tient compte que d'un aspect du clavier, aspect qui n'est pas représentatif de la capacité d'un utilisateur à intégrer les concepts proposés dans son quotidien. Nous proposons en conséquence une stratégie complémentaire d'évaluation sur la base d'une évaluation heuristique des claviers logiciels. Par ailleurs, de manière à faciliter la mise en œuvre des évaluations et simplifier le design de nouveaux claviers, nous proposons une nouvelle version (E-Assist II) de la plate-forme E-Assiste. Elle permet, en premier lieu, de facilité le design et le déroulement des expérimentations, et plus largement d'encadrer les évaluations théoriques, expérimentales et heuristiques des claviers. Une version TinyEAssist permet également de déployer des expérimentations sur des supports mobiles (téléphones portables notamment). En second lieu, sur la base de l'étude de la structure des claviers logiciels, nous avons de plus proposé un langage de spécification des claviers permettant de générer des claviers logiciels complexes (interagissant potentiellement avec des systèmes de prédiction) à des fins d'expérimentation ou de simple usage. Enfin, sur la base des critères de performance mis en évidence par les évaluations heuristiques, nous proposons quatre nouveaux paradigmes de claviers. Parmi ces paradigmes deux ont offert des perspectives particulièrement intéressantes : en premier lieu le clavier multi-layer consistant à conduire progressivement, au cours d'une période transitoire, un utilisateur d'une distribution de touches type AZERTY vers une distribution de touches optimisée ; Le second consistant à faciliter l'accès aux caractères type accents, majuscules ou ponctuation, souvent déconsidérés dans l'optimisation des claviers logiciels.The expansion of mobile devices turn text input performances a major challenge for Human-Machine Interaction. We observed that, even if traditional QWERTY soft keyboards or telephone based soft keyboard were evaluated as poorly efficient, and, even if several alternatives evaluated as more efficient were proposed in the research field, these new alternatives are rarely used. Based on this observation, we argue that the goal of soft keyboard evaluation focus on long term performances whereas does not take into account the perspective for a user to use it in his quotidian. Consequently, we propose a complementary evaluation strategy base on heuristic evaluation methodology. In order to ease the evaluation and design of new soft keyboards, we proposed a new version (E-Assist II) of the E-Assiste plate-form. This plate-form aims, at first, to facilitate the design and procedure of experimentations and, more generally, to guide the theoretical, experimental and heuristic evaluations. A compact version (TinyEAssist) enables to perform experimentation on mobile environment such as mobile phone. At second, based on soft keyboard structure study, we proposed a keyboard specification language enabling to generate complex keyboard (including soft keyboard interacting with prediction systems). The generated soft keyboards may be used into the experimentation plate-form or interacting with the exploration system. At last, based on the criteria highlighted by the heuristic evaluation, we proposed four new soft keyboard paradigms. Among them two paradigms showed interesting perspectives: at first the multilayer keyboard consist in accompanying the user from a standard QWERTY layout to an optimized layout during a transition period; the second consist in accelerating the access to the characters such as accents, upper-case, punctuation, etc., frequently ignored in the keyboard optimizations