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An experimental comparison of touch interaction on vertical and horizontal surfaces

Published: 14 October 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Touch input has been extensively studied. The influence of display orientation on users' performance and satisfaction, however, is not well understood. In an experiment, we manipulate the orientation of multi-touch surfaces to study how 16 participants tap and drag. To analyze if and when participants switch hands or interact bimanually, we track the hands of the participants. Results show that orientation impacts both performance and error rates. Tapping was performed 5% faster on the vertical surface, whereas dragging was performed 5% faster and with fewer errors on the horizontal surface. Participants used their right hand more when dragging (85% of the trials) than when tapping (63% of the trials), but rarely used bimanual interaction. The vertical surface was perceived as more physically demanding to use than the horizontal surface. We conclude by discussing some open questions in understanding the relation between display orientation and touch.

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    NordiCHI '12: Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design
    October 2012
    834 pages
    ISBN:9781450314824
    DOI:10.1145/2399016
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 14 October 2012

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    Author Tags

    1. Fitts' law
    2. bimanual input
    3. horizontal surface
    4. multitouch
    5. pointing
    6. tabletop computing
    7. vertical surface

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    • (2023)Understanding the Effects of Movement Direction on 2D Touch Pointing TasksProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36264827:ISS(444-462)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2023
    • (2023)Evaluating Across-Hinge Dragging with Pen and Touch on Curved and Foldable DisplaysProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580825(1-12)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
    • (2023)On The Effectiveness of Virtual Eye-Hand Coordination Training With Head Mounted Displays2023 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW)10.1109/VRW58643.2023.00014(36-43)Online publication date: Mar-2023
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