Watch+AD: Disambiguing Around-the-Smartwatch Interaction

Hanaë Rateau, Teng Han, Khalad Hasan, Keiko Katsuragawa, Yosra Rekik, Edward Lank

Abstract: While touchscreen input is the de facto standard for information access on modern smartwatches, issues like accuracy and occlusion have encouraged researchers to explore various off-screen forms of input, including on-body, in-air, and hand-pose interactions. However, past research has typically explored these alternative input spaces in isolation one from the other. Additionally, it has received no attention to design the space leveraging multi-finger interaction considering accidental triggering of unwanted interaction. In this paper, we introduce Watch+AD, an explicit form of smartwatch interaction that combines touchscreen input with the around-device inputs on a smartwatch for disambiguing interactions. We present the parameters which can be used to create Watch+AD gestures, then explore the comfort and reachability of AD space when a finger is encumbered by the touchscreen, and present an early probe of command mappings to drive a set of applications that leverage results from ergonomics to guide design of Watch+AD applications. Together, our results support combined on-screen and around-device smartwatch input as a way to expand smartwatches’ gestural input vocabulary.

External IDs:dblp:conf/interact/RateauHHKRL25