Seminar: Towards Expressive Bimanual Interfaces

 

  

Andrew M. Webb

Post Doctoral Researcher

Wednesday February 3, 2021

3:30 pm

Location: online-only

Abstract

My research seeks to make human-computer interfaces more expressive—that is providing direct, flexible, and embodied ways for users to effectively communicate their creative actions to interactive systems.

In this talk, I will discuss how interaction designers can take advantage of bimanual pen and touch input to support expressive visual design operations. Specifically, I will discuss how kinesthetic tension serves as a tool to phrase or group related hand movements into operational units, which in turn helps users command within gestural interfaces. I will showcase examples of phrases within an early-stage visual design tool for landscape architects. Findings from a technology probe reveal how users seemingly express intention towards future action as they position and orient their hands above an interactive surface in the periods between input. Further, I will illustrate how motion sensing from wearable devices, such as fitness bands, can associate touches to specific hands and individual users. This allows interaction designers to improve command expressiveness by assigning different roles to the hands in collaborative contexts. I will lay out a future research agenda for creating more expressive interfaces through novel motion sensing technologies.

 

Bio

Andrew M. Webb is a human-computer interaction researcher, computer scientist, and artist. His research interests center around promoting human creativity through computing technologies. He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. He was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) and a dissertation fellowship from Texas A&M University.