Contact area interaction with sliding widgets

We show how to design touchscreen widgets that respond to a finger’s contact area. In standard touchscreen systems a finger often appears to touch several screen objects, but the system responds as though only a single pixel is touched. In contact area interaction all objects under the finger respond to the touch. Users activate control widgets by sliding a movable element, as though flipping a switch. These Sliding Widgets resolve selection ambiguity and provide designers with a rich vocabulary of self-disclosing interaction mechanism. We showcase the design of several types of Sliding Widgets, and report study results showing that the simplest of these widgets, the Sliding Button, performs on-par with mediumsized pushbuttons and offers greater accuracy for small-sized buttons. ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces. - Input devices and strategies. General terms: Design, Human Factors.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: UIST
• Authors: Tomer Moscovich
• Keywords: Control Widgets, Software Engineering, Touchscreen Widgets, UIST 2009, Widgets Resolve Selection