Alchemy: Dynamic gesture hinting for mobile devices

Paper in proceeding, 2011

Users of smartphones and other mobile gesture interfaces are often left to explore possible interactions in the interface by themselves; there is currently no generic way to indicate which gestures can be made where. This is problematic. Thus, we propose gesture hinting as a means to deal with this: it serves as a combination of static hinting, dynamic visual hinting and cursor hinting, showing users which gestures are currently available. In short we propose having a set of symbols, one for each possible gesture, which can be combined into gesture hints describing how the user can interact with the part of the interface she or he is currently pointing at. As a proof of concept we have developed Alchemy, a gesture hinting application running on iOS, just to verify that it is possible to implement gesture hinting. As a result of this design process we discuss issues related to gesture hinting in general and Alchemy in particular; suggest possible solutions; and also point out further issues that need to be taken into account when applying gesture hinting, e.g. temporal effects and gestures for more than two fingers.