Exploring Visual Signifier Characteristics to Improve the Perception of Affordances of In-Place Touch Inputs

Eva Mackamul (1) , Géry Casiez (1, 2) , Sylvain Malacria (1)

1 LOKI - Technology and knowledge for interaction
2 IUF - Institut universitaire de France

Touch screens supporting different inputs such as `Tap’, `Dwell’, `Double Tap’ and `Force Press' are omnipresent in modern devices and yet this variety of interaction opportunities is rarely communicated to the user. Without visual signifiers, these potentially useful inputs remain unknown or underutilised. We propose a design space of visual signifier characteristics that may impact the perception of in-place one finger inputs. We generated 36 designs and investigated their perception in an online survey (N=32) and an interactive experiment (N=24). The results suggest that visual signifiers increase the perception of input possibilities beyond `Tap’, and reduce perceived mental effort for participants, who also prefer added visual signifiers over a baseline. Our work informs how future touch-based interfaces could be designed to better communicate in-place single finger input possibilities.

Mots clés: signifiers; perceived affordances; touch interfaces; in-place touch input; input methods; Human-Computer Interaction

Domaines: Informatique [cs]

Eva Mackamul, Géry Casiez, Sylvain Malacria. Exploring Visual Signifier Characteristics to Improve the Perception of Affordances of In-Place Touch Inputs. ACM International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (MobileHCI 2023), Sep 2023, Athens, Greece. ⟨10.1145/3604257⟩. ⟨hal-04193358v2⟩