PEN-BASED GESTURE RECOGNITION

The Macintosh Finder employs a desktop metaphor and a prescribed set of mouse-cum-keyboard interactions for browsing documents, folders and selected system resources. The spatial nature of the Finder's desktop and the consistency of its mouse- based interactions implies that, over time, an experienced user will increasingly rely on motor memory when performing certain tasks. This observation, and the catalytic effect of Kurtenbach and Buxton's radial menus idea, inspired us to devise a set of radial gestures for direct manipulation. A supporting set of gestures for text-editing was also adapted from Wolf and Morrel-Samuels’ work. By putting these two sets of gestures together, we can form a pen-based user interface to the Finder. Our pen-and-paper analysis has indicated that the two gesture sets have the potential to streamline commonly used Finder interactions. Moreover, these gestures sets can co-exist with or completely replace the existing mouse and keyboard interactions in the Finder. We have developed a software prototype and have tested our radial gestures on novice and experienced users of the Macintosh Finder. These experiments indicate that a pen-based user interface can provide a more efficient and natural human-computer interface for an application like the Finder. In particular, radial gestures are just as efficient, regardless of whether the mouse or pen input device is used. This result implies that radial gestures can be a useful finger gesturing technique, e.g. when used in conjunction with a Apple Powerbook 500-series touchpad or a Virtual Reality glove.

Author dc:creator

• WONG JOO FUNG

• Pen-based User Interface
• Gesture Recognition
• Radial Gestures
• Motor Skill Learning
• Macintosh Finder