Precise selection techniques for multi-touch screens

Abstract

The size of human fingers and the lack of sensing precision can make precise touch screen interactions difficult. We present a set of five techniques, called Dual Finger Selections, which leverage the recent development of multitouch sensitive displays to help users select very small targets. These techniques facilitate pixel-accurate targeting by adjusting the control-display ratio with a secondary finger while the primary finger controls the movement of the cursor. We also contribute a "clicking" technique, called SimPress, which reduces motion errors during clicking and allows us to simulate a hover state on devices unable to sense proximity. We implemented our techniques on a multi-touch tabletop prototype that offers computer visionbased tracking. In our formal user study, we tested the performance of our three most promising techniques (Stretch, X-Menu, and Slider) against our baseline (Offset), on four target sizes and three input noise levels. All three chosen techniques outperformed the control technique in terms of error rate reduction and were preferred by our participants, with Stretch being the overall performance and preference winner.

A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Multi-touch Input for Large Surfaces

“…Wilson et al [25] present a pinching gestures which could serve as trigger for a state transition. On the same lines, Benko et al [3] implemented SimPress to distinguish between mere touches and clicks.…”

Augmented Interactions: A Framework for Adding Expressive Power to GUI Widgets

“…This augmentation can allow a continuous-value specification at the same time as a discrete selection. For example, Benko and colleagues developed techniques for continuous parameter control using finger position on a multitouch screen with bi-manual interactions [5].…”

“…Numerous new controls, augmented controls, and novel interaction techniques have been developed that perform common desktop tasks better than standard WIMP interactors (e.g., [1,5,8,9,11,15,19,20,28]). As well, a number of augmented interactions that address WIMP limitations have been adopted as standard GUI idioms.…”

1G-13 Analysis of Touch Interaction for the Control of Smart Phones

“…The natural user interface (NUI) takes into account the user's experience which shows how to efficiently create interfaces that reflect human capabilities [1]. The touch interface is modeled based on the behavior of users in real-world situations and is therefore regarded as one of the NUI.…”