TapDrag: An Alternative Dragging Technique on Medium-Sized MultiTouch Displays Reducing Skin Irritation and Arm Fatigue

📝 Abstract

Medium-sized touch displays, sized 30 to 50 inches, are becoming more affordable and more widely available. Prolonged use of such displays can result in arm fatigue or skin irritation, especially when multiple long distance drags are involved. To address this issue, we present TapDrag, an alternative dragging technique that complements traditional dragging with a simple tapping gesture on both ends of the intended dragging path. Our experimental evaluation suggests that TapDrag is a viable alternative to traditional dragging with faster task completion times for long distances. Qualitative user feedback indicates that TapDrag helps prevent skin irritation. A reduction in arm fatigue remains unconfirmed.

💡 Analysis

Medium-sized touch displays, sized 30 to 50 inches, are becoming more affordable and more widely available. Prolonged use of such displays can result in arm fatigue or skin irritation, especially when multiple long distance drags are involved. To address this issue, we present TapDrag, an alternative dragging technique that complements traditional dragging with a simple tapping gesture on both ends of the intended dragging path. Our experimental evaluation suggests that TapDrag is a viable alternative to traditional dragging with faster task completion times for long distances. Qualitative user feedback indicates that TapDrag helps prevent skin irritation. A reduction in arm fatigue remains unconfirmed.

📄 Content

TapDrag: An Alternative Dragging Technique on Medium-Sized Multi- Touch Displays Reducing Skin Irritation and Arm Fatigue

Lasse Farnung Laursen Independent Researcher lasse@laursen.com

Hsiang-Ting Chen University of Technology Sydney† tim.chen@uts.edu.au

Paulo Silva The University of Tokyo‡ paulo.fernando.silva@gmai l.com
Lintalo Suehiro Independent Researcher lintalo@suehiro.dk

Takeo Igarashi The University of Tokyo‡ takeo@acm.org

† University of Technology Sydney, City campus, 15 Broadway, Ultimo NSW 2007, Sydney, Australia ‡ The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Tokyo, Japan

ABSTRACT Medium-sized touch displays, sized 30 to 50 inches, are becoming more affordable and more widely available. Prolonged use of such displays can result in arm fatigue or skin irritation, especially when multiple long distance drags are involved. To address this issue, we present TapDrag, an alternative dragging technique that complements traditional dragging with a simple tapping gesture on both ends of the intended dragging path. Our experimental evaluation suggests that TapDrag is a viable alternative to traditional dragging with faster task completion times for long distances. Qualitative user feedback indicates that TapDrag helps prevent skin irritation. A reduction in arm fatigue remains unconfirmed. Keywords: Drag, 2D target acquisition, large display, empirical evaluation, interaction design Index Terms: H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces—Graphical user interfaces (GUI); H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces—Input devices and strategies, prototyping; 1 INTRODUCTION Medium-sized touch-displays are becoming cheaper and more popular [1]. We define the medium-sized touch-display as having a diagonal screen length of approximately 30 to 50 inches, i.e. a screen within full reach of both arms of an average adult. These touch-devices are becoming more common in shared work environments to aid in design tasks [2], used as live performance instruments [3, 4], and used as public interactive installations [5, 6]. In these applications, the user will often be required to perform numerous dragging interactions, e.g. arranging photos/cards/media [2, 5, 6], and continuously positioning/adjusting audio/video elements [3, 4]. While developing prototype software on a medium-sized touch display, we observed that prolonged use could lead to both arm fatigue and skin irritation, especially when lengthy drag gestures were involved. Long distance dragging can be tiring because it involves extensive arm movement across the entire display, and the continuous friction between the finger and the display over an extended period of time is more likely to result in skin irritation. Novice users are more prone to experience skin irritation, as they may apply more pressure than required when interacting with an unfamiliar large touch display. As support for pressure sensitive interaction in popular touch devices continues to grow, e.g., force touch displays in recent Apple devices, these problems may be further compounded. Previous works have addressed interaction issues on large displays using interface modifications [7, 8], novel widgets [9] and additional hardware [10, 11]. However, an alternative dragging technique that more closely mimics the simplicity of the traditional drag while also reducing skin irritation and arm fatigue, for medium-sized displays, could lead to a better interaction experience.

Figure 1: TapDrag interaction sequences. We describe TapDrag, an alternative dragging technique that completes dragging tasks with simple tapping gestures on both ends. Traditional dragging gestures requires the user to place a finger at a source position, then slide it to the target position without leaving the display surface. TapDrag, as shown in Figure 1, achieves the same result by having the user place one finger at the source position, then another at the target position. The object then instantly moves from one finger to the other. To complete the TapDrag, the user lifts the finger at the source, and finally the finger at the target. Less sliding contact between the user’s fingers and the touch surface mitigates skin irritation. Enabling users to use both hands to complete the interaction reduces the likelihood of full arm movement over a longer distance. We conducted an experimental study, comparing TapDrag to traditional dragging. Overall, the results suggest that TapDrag is a good alternative to the traditional drag gesture for long distance dragging on medium-sized multi-touch displays. We implemented TapDrag alongside popular multi-touch gestures and found no conflicts in a single user scenario.
2 RELATED WORK A growing body of work exists regarding interactive touch surfaces. Buxton et al. [12] presents one of the earliest related works

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