FiTouch: Adapting graphical user interface for touch interaction

Abstract

As interaction paradigm shifts, touchscreen has been the focus of significant recent study to support the ease of direct manipulation but, to date, few researches have been done to face the challenge that graphical user interface (GUI) of legacy software including both app and game is not yet easily accessible and utilized in a usable and experiential way for touchscreen. In this paper, we present a holistic design valuing human capabilities, hardware ergonomics and environmental factors to improve usability in context of execution when interacting with legacy software on touch surface and name it as FiTouch. FiTouch proposes a touch-friendly GUI for legacy software by analyzing issues raised by old GUI, which is designed for mouse interaction and adopted for touch interaction. We provide details on the feasibility and benefits of our new device-adaptive GUI generating approach in the evaluation by giving an example of transforming apps designed for PC to Windows-based laptops with touchscreen. FiTouch also concludes some suggestions on designing operating system across hardware platforms.