Improving gestures and interaction techniques for pen-based user interfaces

Abstract

The goal of this research is the improvement of pen-based user interfaces (PUIs) in two areas: ease of operation for end users, and ease of creation for designers and programmers. A promising feature of PUIs that has not yet been fully exploited is gestures: marks that activate commands rather than enter data. Users of existing PUIs are burdened with unreliable gesture recognition and have difficulty learning and remembering gestures. These problems are compounded by the inappropriate application of graphical user interface interaction techniques to PUIs. We are developing a tool to aid PUI designers in creating and evaluating gesture sets that are easier for computers to recognize and easier for humans to learn and remember. This work will also develop and evaluate new interaction techniques that take advantage of the unique characteristics of PUIS.