by: Jaime Ruiz, Yang Li, and Edward Lank
Authors
Researchers!
Ruiz and Lank do research at the University of Waterloo, while Li researches with Google Research.
Presentation Venue
"CHI '11 Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems" as per the document specs from the ACM digital library, dl.acm.org. The presentation took place in New York City, NY, 2011. (Again...The UIST has been repalced..)
Summary
Hypothesis
Ruiz hypothesized that there are a set of common motion gestures that users would find the most natural and consistent mappings to interactions with a mobile device.
Methods
Ruiz put custom software on an Android so that it would record accelerometer data and lock the screen to prevent any feedback to the user. Twenty participants were chosen and asked to create several gestures for a set of tasks that needed to be performed on the phone, such as answering a call. Data about the gesture itself was actually sequentially recorded on a computer connected to the smartphone. Participants were then interviewed to analyze some of their decisions in creating gestures for the phone.
Results
Ruiz found that there were indeed several common gestures that people found. The most common gesture was lifting the phone to the ear in order to answer the phone because it felt the most natural. It was also very common for them to mimic replacing the phone on an old receiver in order to end a call. Most participants expressed a desire to have the same gesture available for multiple analogous behaviors (next, previous in different applications).
Discussion
I find myself asking why this sort of research was not performed sooner. Obviously, something like answering a phone by bringing it to your ear is how many of us grew up answering a phone. It is far more natural than pressing a button (Flip phones are better in this regard, in my opinion). With this in mind, I am not particularly impressed with the research discovery because it is semi obvious. But, I am relieved that SOMEONE did it, so maybe the data can be incorporated. However, there are still developing methods of handling data on smartphones. Just because we CAN perform motion gestures, that does not necessarily mean that we need to. I personally feel that moving my phone to the left or right in order to proceed to the next or previous is far less natural that swiping the application with my own finger. This is particularly true with images. If I am interacting with many real photos, I am not likely to pick up the table and shake it to look at the next image. I am much more likely to touch the picture, move it, and bring the next one into focus.
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