Heat maps as a usability tool for multi-touch interaction in mobile applications

Heat maps are an important usability tool for visualising eye gaze data, mouse movement or click interaction on web pages. Regarding mobile applications however, use cases for heat maps are still limited. For example, eye tracking is difficult to realise due to limitations imposed by mobility or hardware requirements. Moreover, heat maps for under- standing multi-touch interaction have not been used as a usability tool for mobile applications yet. In this paper we present a concept to generate heat maps for finger-based multi-touch interaction. Our goal is to provide a usability tool for mobile applications, which can be used in studies with a huge number of test participants in real-world environments. As a benefit, developers and designers will be able to comprehend user interaction within mobile applications, which aids in identifying commonly used touch ges- tures, focus areas and points of interest without the need for additional and bulky hardware.