EMS-based actuated output gestures: a design process for novices

Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) has been gaining increasing attention in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), owing to its potential to generate more expressive haptic feedback. Despite many hardware and software prototypes developed to study specific interaction aspects, designing EMS-based actuated gestures remains a complex endeavor. In this work, we present a design process for actuated gestures and a mobile app to support researchers and gesture designers during EMS-based gesture creation. The app covers the individual calibration of muscles, the composition of single movements into more complex gestures, and the playback of the pre-calibrated gestures. A user study with 12 participants, mostly non-familiar with EMS, has shown that the app was successful in supporting participants test actuated gestures. Our main contributions include a design process for actuated gestures, as well as an open-source app to support the approach and its first evaluation.