Touchgesten am Arbeitsplatz: Wie eine Gestensteuerung Smart-Home-Geräte steuern und den Büroalltag bereichern kann

Abstract

The input methods used with personal computers have been unchanged for decades, with mouse and keyboard still being the sole interaction methods despite advancements in technology and changing conditions, such as working from home. This master thesis shows how touch-based gesture control can add value when working at o"ce desks and which smart home interactions to integrate. A gesture elicitation study was used to collect suggestions of actions to control and of gestures to use. Repeated topics and areas of application in the list of suggested actions provide insights on parts of their daily o"ce work for which users would prefer to have simpler interactions. Many of the proposed gestures were relatively simple. Creative but more complex gestures were proposed, but described as being less intuitive, which is also reflected in the number of proposals which included each of these gestures. Information about desk usage, the placement of mouse and keyboard, and possible locations for performing touch gestures were collected by conducting interviews. The gesture control placements preferred by most participants were located close to mouse and keyboard. Based on these insights, ten gestures and three placements were evaluated in a user study which was followed by a gesture identification study. The user study was performed with a within-subjects design for the three placements. For each placement gesture tasks were interleaved with keyboard and mouse tasks. Comparison of the error rates showed that no significant di!erences between the positions for any of the tasks. A significant di!erence in the duration needed for task completion was found for both gesture tasks and mouse tasks, when these tasks were interleaved. No significant di!erence was found in the duration of tasks when gesture tasks were interleaved with keyboard tasks. There was no clear preference among the participants for any of the three placements. In the gesture identification study, the ten selected gestures were assigned actions deemed suitable by the participants, who then also evaluated the ease of performing the gesture and how good the suggested action matches the gesture. The gestures considered the most usable included tapping and simple swiping gestures. The least attractive gestures required coordinated movements of all five digits of one hand, or drawing a symbol. A gesture set has been created based on the responses of the gesture elicitation and gesture identification studies. This gesture set can serve as the basis of a gesture control, but users shall be able to change the gesture set in an application, in order to accommodate di!erent requirements. While some of the actions suggested in the identification study had not been mentioned in the elicitation study, most associations in the gesture set match the insights of both studies. A User Experience Questionaire was conducted at the end of the user study, which showed values above the average for the hedonic qualities, but below average for the pragmatic qualities. Overall the results suggest that a interaction based on touch gestures is suitable for the investigated use case and that it would bring variety to working in the o"ce.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	German (Austria)
Supervisor	Kathrin Probst (Supervisor)