Studying the Visual Representation of Microgestures

Abstract

The representations of microgestures are essentials for researchers presenting their results through academic papers and system designers proposing tutorials to novice users. However, those representations remain disparate and inconsistent. As a first attempt to investigate how to best graphically represent microgestures, we created 21 designs, each depicting static and dynamic versions of 4 commonly used microgestures (tap, swipe, flex and hold). We first studied these designs in a quantitative online experiment with 45 participants. We then conducted a qualitative laboratory experiment in Augmented Reality with 16 participants. Based on the results, we provide design guidelines on which elements of a microgesture should be represented and how. In particular, it is recommended to represent the actuator and the trajectory of a microgesture. Also, although preferred by users, dynamic representations are not considered better than their static counterparts for depicting a microgesture and do not necessarily result in a better user recognition.

Clarifying and differentiating discoverability

“…Considering depictions, [66] investigated the understandability of different visual presentation of single-handed microgestures and extracted design guidelines on which features of such gestures should be represented. Notably, they observed which microgesture users thought to be possible given a visual representation, without any prior knowledge of the available gestures.…”