Understanding Same-Side Interactions with Wrist-Worn Devices.

We investigate one-handed, same-side gestural interactions with wrist-worn devices. We contribute results of an elicitation study with 26 participants from various backgrounds to learn about gestures people would like to do when only able to interact using the arm on which they wear the device, e.g. while carrying something in the opposite hand. Based on the analysis of 1,196 video-taped gestures, 145 atomic gestures could be identified, which in turn were used to create a set of 296 unique gesture combinations. From these, we identified a conflict-free set of 43 gestures to trigger 46 common smartwatch tasks. The results show that symbolic gestures such as drawing a question mark for activating a help function are consistently used across participants. We further found symbolic and continuous gestures to be used significantly more often by men. Based on the results, we derived guidelines that should be considered when designing gestures for SSI.