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Examining the usability of touchscreen gestures for adults with DS

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A Correction to this article was published on 12 June 2021

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Abstract

This document is part of a global investigation that aims to establish best practices in usability testing of mobile applications, that fit the specific needs of persons with cognitive disabilities. The motivating factor is to improve the quality of life of people with special needs. As a first step, we want to discover what are the skills of people with DS (DS) when using a mobile device. Thanks to its direct manipulation interaction style, multi-touch technology is the ideal mechanism for learning activities with a view to the social inclusion of people with DS. This paper investigates the most common touchscreen gestures on commercial existing software. A commercial analysis was carried out to discover the touch screen gestures used by 103 free software Apps running on a mobile touch screen tablet of 11 where the applications run”. The commercial analysis showed that most applications support tap and drag operations on multi-touch technology. Additionally, the research sought to discover the adults with DS (19–54 years of age) ability to perform other gestures on multi-touch surfaces. A DS user skill study was performed to assess the ability of this user segment to interact with multi-touch surfaces. The analysis involved 53 participants, aged between 19 and 54 years, from two vocational training centers attended by people with DS in Madrid. Authors used the Gesture Games App for experimenting with multi-touch gestures such as tap, double tap, long press, drag, scale up, scale down, and one-finger rotation. Tap, double tap, and drag were the three gestures that the most participant could use. In contrast, participants had difficulty performing one-finger rotation and long press gesture. Our statistical analysis showed that the ability to perform each gesture was independent of gender, age group, and previous experience with touchscreen of a participant.

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All experiment sessions were recorded and the logs generated by the App were also saved. The authors have this information in a private repository.

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Notes

  1. One participant did not perform scale-down task.

  2. For example, if a participant completed two out of three trials for scale down with completion time of 1000 ms and 1500 ms, the average completion time of the participant for scale down is (1000 ms + 1500 ms)/2 trials = 1250 ms.

  3. There are 370 observations, because 53 participants, each performing 7 tasks (53 × 7 = 371). However, we discarded one observation due to a record error. The resulting number of observations is 370.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the DS Institutions, which allowed us to work with the participants, they are Prodis Foundation, Apadema (Asociacion para la promocion y atencion a la persona con Discapaciadad Intelectual) and also to the SENESCYT (Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation of Ecuador. The authors would also like to thank to TECO Department Pervasive Computing Systems at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, this work was possible due to their support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TECO Department Pervasive Computing Systems, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Vincenz-Prießnitz-Straße 1, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Doris Cáliz & Ployplearn Ravivanpong

  2. FOM Hochschulzentren, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Vincenz-Prießnitz-Straße 1, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Andrea Schankin

  3. Centro de Investigación en Mecatrónica y Sistemas Interactivos (MIST), Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica, Carrera de Ingeniería en Ciencias de La Computación, Av. Machala y Sabanilla, 170301, Quito, Ecuador

    Janio Jadán-Guerrero

  4. Facultad de Sistemas y Telecomunicaciones, Universidad Tecnológica Espíritu Santo, Km 2.5 Via Samborondon, Guayaquil, Ecuador

    Washington Caraguay

  5. Dirección de Tecnologías de La Información y Comunicación (DTIC) Rumipamba y Bourgeois, Universidad UTE, 170147, Quito, Ecuador

    Leonardo Arellano

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  1. Doris Cáliz
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Correspondence to Doris Cáliz.

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Cáliz, D., Ravivanpong, P., Schankin, A. et al. Examining the usability of touchscreen gestures for adults with DS. J Reliable Intell Environ 7, 355–380 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40860-020-00122-1

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