The Challenge of Designing Gestures for Interaction

Abstract: The main interfaces for interaction with computers today are; keyboard, mouse and remote control. In order to interact with the presentation software Power Point, the presenter has to focus either on the computer or the buttons on the remote control. By doing this, the presenter often loses the contact with his audience and his or her flow of speech gets interrupted. This project has researched the possibility of using gestures for interaction with Power Point, by using an appliance that detects gestures. The purpose was that the interaction should be possible to realise by software, which we have done an introductory design of. We have focused on assisting presenters when they use Power Point and other applications when delivering presentation. To collect data and get an understanding of presenters, presentations and gestures we have observed presenters in action, done workshops together with future users and tested some gestures in real life. These are methods inspired from approaches such as ethnographic fieldwork and participatory design. During the whole project we have used video recording to collect and save data. To create an understanding and clear picture of what the future software should include UML-diagrams were used. We have separated gestures in two categories; natural and designed. The natural gestures occur naturally during speech and social interaction, while the designed gestures are gestures that you learn to use and express, often to perform a task. We discovered that it was the designed gestures that are best suited for gestural interaction with computer. Since the designed gestures are close to the natural way of gesturing we see them as easier to learn, remember and also more comfortable to use. We think the designed gestures have the potential to become second nature, therefore they are good to use for interaction with computers. Our research work led us to realise a need for an on/off function, to distinguish the designed gestures from the natural ones. By using a gestural interface during a presentation, the presenters can keep the focus on the audience and the message they want to convey. When gestural interfaces become reality they will introduce a paradigm shift in the way that people interact with computers and information.