Mold-It: Understanding how Physical Shapes affect Interaction with Handheld Freeform Devices

Abstract

Advanced technologies are increasingly enabling the creation of interactive devices with non-rectangular form-factors but it is currently unclear what alternative form-factors are desirable for end-users. We contribute an understanding of the interplay between the rationale for the form factors of such devices and their interactive content through think-aloud design sessions in which participants could mold devices as they wished using clay. We analysed their qualitative reflections on how the shapes affected interaction. Using thematic analysis, we identified shape features desirable on handheld freeform devices and discuss the particularity of three themes central to the choice of form factors: freeform dexterity, shape features discoverability and shape adaptability (to the task and context). In a second study following the same experimental set-up, we focused on the trade off between dexterity and discoverability and the relation to the concept of affordance. Our work reveals the shape features that impact the most the choice of grasps on freeform devices from which we derive design guidelines for the design of such devices.

Publisher Link

https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3502022

Citation

Marcos Serrano, Jolee Finch, Pourang Irani, Andrés Lucero, and Anne Roudaut. 2022. Mold-It: Understanding how Physical Shapes affect Interaction with Handheld Freeform Devices. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 402, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3502022

Bibtext Entry

@inproceedings{10.1145/3491102.3502022,
author = {Serrano, Marcos and Finch, Jolee and Irani, Pourang and Lucero, Andr\'{e}s and Roudaut, Anne},
title = {Mold-It: Understanding How Physical Shapes Affect Interaction with Handheld Freeform Devices},
year = {2022},
isbn = {9781450391573},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3502022},
doi = {10.1145/3491102.3502022},
abstract = {Advanced technologies are increasingly enabling the creation of interactive devices with non-rectangular form-factors but it is currently unclear what alternative form-factors are desirable for end-users. We contribute an understanding of the interplay between the rationale for the form factors of such devices and their interactive content through think-aloud design sessions in which participants could mold devices as they wished using clay. We analysed their qualitative reflections on how the shapes affected interaction. Using thematic analysis, we identified shape features desirable on handheld freeform devices and discuss the particularity of three themes central to the choice of form factors: freeform dexterity, shape features discoverability and shape adaptability (to the task and context). In a second study following the same experimental set-up, we focused on the trade off between dexterity and discoverability and the relation to the concept of affordance. Our work reveals the shape features that impact the most the choice of grasps on freeform devices from which we derive design guidelines for the design of such devices.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
articleno = {402},
numpages = {14},
keywords = {Freeform interfaces, device form factor, handheld devices},
location = {New Orleans, LA, USA},
series = {CHI '22}
}