Exploring The User Experience Of Proxemic Hand And Pen Input Above And Aside A Drawing Screen

Digital drawing experiences are not only fused by the flexibility of digital materials but also influenced by the availability of interaction space. In this paper, we first present a prototype, which implements a method to turn the (mid-air) space above and aside a drawing screen in a desktop setting dynamically into sensory space for gestural and spatial input. Then we report on a user study exploring how participants experience digital drawing when the additional interaction space above and aside a screen is exploited for exemplary proxemic input techniques for zooming and panning a drawing. Our results show that the new multimodal input techniques are perceived as significantly more attractive than a baseline drawing condition which only utilizes touch based input. We conclude by discussing implications and limitations of our findings and input above and aside a drawing screen in general.