Maria Karam

A study on the use of semaphoric gestures to support secondary task interactions

We present results of a study that considers (a) gestures outside the context of a specific implementation and (b) their use in supporting secondary, rather than primary tasks in a multitasking environment. The results show semaphoric gestures offer significant benefits over function keys in such interactions, and how our findings can be used to extend models of design and evaluation for ubiquitous computing environments that support multitasking.

Investigating user tolerance for errors in vision-enabled gesture-based interactions

In this paper, we describe our investigation into user tolerance of recognition errors during hand gesture interactions with visual displays. The study is based on our proposed interaction model for investigating gesture based interactions, focusing on three elements: Interaction context, system performance and user goals. This Wizard of Oz experiment investigates how recognition system accuracy rates and task characteristics in both desktop and ubiquitous computing scenarios can influence user tolerance for gesture interactions. Results suggest that interaction context is a greater influence on user tolerance than system performance alone, where recognition error rates can potentially reach 40% before users will abandon gestures and use an alternate interaction mode in a ubiquitous computing scenario. Results also suggest that in a desktop scenario, traditional input methods are more appropriate than gestures.