Inducing gaze gestures by static illustrations

In gesture-based user interfaces, the effort needed for learning the gestures is a persistent problem that hinders their adoption in products. However, people's natural gaze paths form shapes during viewing. For example, reading creates a recognizable pattern. These gaze patterns can be utilized in human-technology interaction. We experimented with the idea of inducing specific gaze patterns by static drawings. The drawings included visual hints to guide the gaze. By looking at the parts of the drawing, the user's gaze composed a gaze gesture that activated a command. We organized a proof-of-concept trial to see how intuitive the idea is. Most participants understood the idea without specific instructions already on the first round of trials. We argue that with careful design the form of objects and especially their decorative details can serve as a gaze-based user interface in smart homes and other environments of ubiquitous computing.