Abstract
Accessible Digital Musical instruments (ADMIs) dedicated to people with motor disabilities represent a relevant niche in accessibility research. The designer is often required to exploit unconventional physical interaction channels, different from hands and fingers. Although comprehensive evaluation methods for Digital Musical Instruments in general are found in literature, little has been done both in ADMIs evaluation and the analysis of suitable interaction channels from a Human-Computer Interaction perspective. In this work the performance of breath, gaze pointing and head movements is analyzed, in terms of movement speed and stability, through a simple experiment. These interaction channels could be exploited in the design of ADMIs dedicated to quadriplegic musicians. The proposed experiment has similarities with past Fitts Law evaluation tests. Results are discussed proposing possible mappings between channels and musical performance parameters. These results could also be useful to inform the design of different interface types.
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Source code available under a GNU-GPLv3 license at https://github.com/Neeqstock/HanDMIs-TestSuite.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to offer our special thanks to Daniele Zago (from University of Padova, Italy) for advising us on statistical analysis, and to Mattia Galante (from University of Milan, Italy) for the great help given by assisting the testers.
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Davanzo, N., Avanzini, F. (2020). Experimental Evaluation of Three Interaction Channels for Accessible Digital Musical Instruments. In: Miesenberger, K., Manduchi, R., Covarrubias Rodriguez, M., Peňáz, P. (eds) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. ICCHP 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12377. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58805-2_52
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58805-2_52
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