Hands as a controller: user preferences for hand specific on-skin gestures

Abstract

Hand-specific on-skin (HSoS) gestures are a trending interaction modality yet there is a gap in the field regarding users’ preferences about these gestures. Thus, we conducted a user-elicitation study collecting 957 gestures from 19 participants for 26 commands. Results indicate that (1) users use one hand as a reference object, (2) load different meanings to different parts of the hand, (3) give importance to hand-properties rather than the skin properties and (4) hands can turn into self-interfaces. Moreover, according to users’ subjective evaluations, (5) exclusive gestures are less tiring than the intuitive ones. We present users’ subjective evaluations regarding these and present a 33-element taxonomy to categorize them. Furthermore, we present two user-defined gesture sets; the intuitive set including users’ first choices and natural-feeling gestures, and the exclusive set which includes more creative gestures indigenous to this modality. Our findings can inspire and guide designers and developers of HSoS.