An exploratory study of user-generated spatial gestures with social mobile devices

Social Devices are smart phones that interact with each other in order to proactively trigger interaction between co-located users. Social Devices promote proxemic interactions between people and can act as enablers of users' social contacts. Various modalities are used to support natural interactions between users and Social Devices. We present an explorative study of spatial gestures that could support interactions with Social Devices. Our aim was to find out what kind of gestures users would like to use for different types of actions. Ten pairs participated in a laboratory study in which they went through three scenarios of Social Devices. The participants were asked to generate gestures that they would find suitable for user actions within the scenarios. In this paper, we present the found gesture types and their fit to various user actions. Our results show that Scan, Swing, Nod and Turn the screen down are potential spatial gestures for intuitive use of Social Devices. User feedback about their preferences of using spatial gestures indicates issues of social acceptance.