Gestures for Mobile Interaction

Hand motion -- pointing, gesturing, grasping, shaking, tapping -- is a rich channel of communication. We point and gesture while we talk; we grasp tools to extend our capabilities; we grasp, rotate, and shake items to explore them. Yet, the rich repertoire of hand motion is largely ignored in interfaces to mobile computation: the user of a modern smartphone generally holds the device stationary while tapping or swiping its surface. Why are so many possible affordances ignored? Certainly not for technical reasons, as smartphones contain an evolving set of sensors for recognizing movement of the phone, including accelerometers, gyroscopes and cameras. However, beyond rotating to change screen orientation or shaking to shuffle songs, little has been done to enable rich gestural input through device motion. This research project includes my on-going work in design, recognition and characterizing of motion gestures to control modern smartphones