Experimenting Touchless Gestural Interaction for a University Public Web-based Display

TL;DR

This paper explores touchless gestural interaction using Microsoft Kinect for university public displays, presenting empirical evaluations that reveal user reactions and offer insights for designing gesture-based interfaces.

Contribution

It introduces a gesture-based browsing method for public displays and provides empirical data on user reactions, addressing the lack of standards in touchless interaction.

Findings

Users reacted positively to gesture-based browsing.

The study highlighted the absence of standardized gestures.

Design insights were derived for future touchless interfaces.

Abstract

Interest in and development of touchless gestural interfaces has recently exploded, fueled by the diffusion of both commercial midair gesture platforms and public interactive displays. This paper focuses on an application based on Microsoft Kinect that allows students to browse a university website, hosted on a public display, through simple gestures. We present two empirical evaluations where we evaluated how users react to this new way of interaction. In addition to confirming the current lack of standards, our results provide some inspiration for the design of touchless interaction.