Information Technology Reference
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endeavor to embrace new technologies especially
in the mobile arena. The recent mobile HCI lit-
erature shows how such new technologies could
be deployed in a variety of application domains;
it also demonstrates how different technologies
may be combined and how existing technologies
may be adapted to suit mobile devices and people.
In this chapter, we discuss mainly technologies
that rely on sensory modalities other than, or in
addition to, human vision, and those that go be-
yond the traditional keyboard-screen paradigm.
We explore the techniques currently applied in
user research and show wherever suitable how
evolving mobile products reported are evaluated.
In many recent papers, innovative technological
approaches and solutions to known user-related
problems have only been considered or proposed,
with no user-based studies reported as yet. One may
regard these ideas as novel approaches to require-
ments gathering where technological and human
sensory and motor capabilities and boundaries
are explored 'in the wild'. That is, in some cases
it is still unclear how the evolving technologies
discussed may be useful in future applications.
In other papers, small pilot studies with a limited
number of participants have been published. Since
some of the technologies are still at a very early
stage of development, it is not surprising that few
studies report results of fully fledged user-based
studies. We include all kinds of studies here, as
we find the ideas behind proposed or preliminary
prototype applications often very inspiring and
thought-provoking, allowing us to speculate on
potential future mobile applications.
The next section discusses a range of recently
published gesture-based approaches employed in
mobile devices. It presents how some techniques
invented in the gaming industry has been, and
could be, used in other areas such as in medi-
cine, particularly in rehabilitation. We review
two studies concerning wearable gesture-based
technologies that can be used with 'eyes busy',
and one study that frees up mobile touch screen
real estate by using the casing itself as an inter-
action mechanism. We take the risk of going
out on a limb by imagining how some of the
ideas underlying these novel approaches could
be applied to other domains. It is followed by a
discussion of some context- and location-aware
technologies that, although many issues are still
to be overcome, suggest some innovative applica-
tions. Next, we review some of the literature on
sound-based interaction, both non-vocal sounds
and speech. Interesting progress is being made
in terms of substituting visual information such
as graphs and geographical maps with sound as
well as sound being used to help blind and visu-
ally impaired people navigate their environment.
One recent application using natural language to
present information about graphs allowing users
to interrogate the graph content is described in
some detail. We then offer some thoughts on the
challenges of collecting data in usability evalua-
tions of mobile devices and conclude that, although
we agree with other authors that new evaluation
paradigms are needed in mobile HCI, the HCI
community must be very careful not to deny both
laboratory-based and field-based usability studies
their rightful place in the mobile domain.
GESTURE-BASED INTERACTION
The common element in all gesture-based ap-
proaches is that they rely on some kind of motion
detection or motion tracking that is then 'trans-
lated' into vocabulary or reciprocal movements
that are meaningful to the particular application
when used in the appropriate context. Although
gestures have been considered as an interaction
technique in HCI since the late 1980s, gesture
based interfaces began to make its way into
popular culture via Hollywood in 2002 with the
release of the film “Minority Report” in which
the lead character interacted with screens by
pointing and manipulating objects with gestures.
These interfaces are now a Hollywood standard
in science-fiction films such as Iron Man 2, but
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