On Gesture Combination: An Exploration Of A Solution To Augment Gesture Interaction

Current gesture interaction paradigm mainly involves a one-to-one gesture-command mapping. This leads to memorability issues regarding (1) the mapping - as each new command requires a newgesture, and (2) the gestures specifics (e.g., motion paths) - that can be complex to leverage the recognition of several gestures. We explore the concept of combining 3D gestures when interacting in smart environments. We first propose a design space to characterize the temporal and spatial combination aspects, and the gesture types used by the combination. We then report results from three user studies in the context of smart TV interaction. The first study reveals that end-users can create gesture sets with combinations fully optimized to reuse gestures. The second study shows that combining gestures can lead to improved memorability compared to single gestures. The third study reveals that preferences for gestures combination appear when single gestures have an abstract gesture-command mapping.