Improving Accuracy and Efficiency of Hand Gestures on Multi-Touch Devices

<p>Geometric transformation gestures such as rotation, scaling and dragging are extremely common. There are multiple variants of designing and implementing these gestures. Variants include slightly modifying the gesture input (e.g. different original placement or tracing of fingers) or the resulting action (e.g. scale factor, retention of scale centre or rotation degree). There has not been a significant amount of research assessing the best design of geometric transformation gestures across multiple multi-touch devices. We describe our research project that looks at variants of standard geometric transformation hand gestures. We hypothesise that these variants are superior to standard geometric transformation gestures (in terms of supporting more precise transformations and faster completion times) and are as easy to initiate and maintain as the standard gestures. We also discuss our experiences in implementing these variants and describe and present user experiments we have completed in order to test our hypotheses. The results show that only some of our variants are more precise and support faster transformation completion and that only some of these results are mirrored between devices. Furthermore, only some of our variants are as easy to initiate and maintain as the standard gestures.</p>

Improving Accuracy and Efficiency of Hand Gestures on Multi-Touch Devices

<p>Geometric transformation gestures such as rotation, scaling and dragging are extremely common. There are multiple variants of designing and implementing these gestures. Variants include slightly modifying the gesture input (e.g. different original placement or tracing of fingers) or the resulting action (e.g. scale factor, retention of scale centre or rotation degree). There has not been a significant amount of research assessing the best design of geometric transformation gestures across multiple multi-touch devices. We describe our research project that looks at variants of standard geometric transformation hand gestures. We hypothesise that these variants are superior to standard geometric transformation gestures (in terms of supporting more precise transformations and faster completion times) and are as easy to initiate and maintain as the standard gestures. We also discuss our experiences in implementing these variants and describe and present user experiments we have completed in order to test our hypotheses. The results show that only some of our variants are more precise and support faster transformation completion and that only some of these results are mirrored between devices. Furthermore, only some of our variants are as easy to initiate and maintain as the standard gestures.</p>

Virtual reality as an object and a tool of cognition: applied aspects

Projects developed with the use of virtual reality technologies provide a user’s immersion in an artificial world with the ability to act in it using special touch devices in real time. The design and architecture of virtual reality are new and in-demand professional competencies today. The work of a virtual architect is responsible: the virtual world can become for the user both an area where discoveries are made, and a space of psychological trauma. Therefore, the professional training of creators of digital worlds involves the active use of new educational technologies in the educational process, among which virtual reality technologies occupy a special place.

METHODS AND MEASURING INSTRUMENTS BASED ON SMART SENSORS

The article is devoted to new developments of touch devices. There are several types of smart sensors. The classification and examples of their practical application are given.

Do input modalities matter? Speed and reliability of touch inputs and mouse inputs in visual foraging

Visual attention is usually investigated in a variant of the visual search paradigm with a single search target to find in the scene. However, interactions with the natural environment often revolve around more than searching the environment and then executing a single decision. To alleviate these concerns, visual attention researches have recently started exploring the possibility of using touch-screen based foraging tasks. In these tasks, multiple targets have to be cancelled by tapping them. But the adoption remains poor, possibly because of the non-availability of large touch-screen devices in most research institutions. A viable substitute for cancelling targets in such search affordances could be the computer mouse. In the present study, we aimed at investigating how search performance differs in a visual foraging task depending on the input device (touch versus mouse). We presented a visual foraging task for a known target that had to be found multiple times per search display in several search conditions. We found that responses given via mouse are slightly slower in general, but the variances in responses are comparable in all measurements. We did not find disadvantages in using computer mouse in comparison to using a touch screen. We conclude that the computer mouse is an adequate alternative to touch devices and argue that using the computer mouse in visual attention studies should become better adopted.

Adherence to home-based videogame treatment for amblyopia in children and adults

ObjectiveHome-based videogame treatments are increasingly being used for various sensory conditions, including amblyopia (“lazy eye”), but adherence continues to limit success. To examine detailed behavioral patterns associated with home-based videogame treatment, we analyzed in detail the videogame adherence data from the Binocular treatment of amblyopia with videogames (BRAVO) clinical trial (ACTRN12613001004752).MethodsChildren (7-12 years), Teenagers (13-17 years) and Adults (≥18 years) with unilateral amblyopia were loaned iPod Touch devices with either an active treatment or placebo videogame and instructed to play for 1-2 hours/day for six weeks at home. Objectively-recorded adherence data from device software were used to analyze adherence patterns such as session length, daily distribution of gameplay, use of the pause function, and differences between age groups. Objectively-recorded adherence was also compared to subjectively-reported adherence from paper-based diaries.Results105 of the 115 randomized participants completed six weeks of videogame training. Average adherence was 65% (SD 37%) of the minimum hours prescribed. Game training was generally performed in short sessions (mean 21.5, SD 11.2 minutes), mostly in the evening, with frequent pauses (median every 4.1 minutes, IQR 6.1). Children played in significantly shorter sessions and paused more frequently than older age groups (p<0.0001). Participants tended to over-report adherence in subjective diaries compared to objectively-recorded gameplay time.ConclusionAdherence to home-based videogame treatment was characterized by short sessions interspersed with frequent pauses, suggesting regular disengagement. This complicates dose-response calculations and may interfere with the effectiveness of treatments like binocular treatments for amblyopia, which require sustained visual stimulation.Clinical trial IDACTRN12613001004752