PhD Seminar • Human-Computer Interaction — Experimental Analysis of Mode Switching Techniques in Touch-based User Interfaces

Hemant Surale, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

In this seminar, we will present the results of a 36-participant empirical comparison of touch mode-switching. Six techniques were evaluated, spanning current and future techniques: long press, non-dominant hand, two-fingers, hard press, knuckle, and thumb-on-finger. Two poses were controlled for, seated with the tablet on a desk and standing with the tablet held on the forearm. 

Findings indicate pose has no effect on mode switching time and little effect on error rate; using two-fingers is fastest while long press is much slower; non-preferred hand and thumb-on-finger also rate highly in subjective scores. We will discuss the experimental protocol and a comparison of touch and pen mode switching. Among the common techniques, we found the non-dominant hand is faster than pressure with touch, whereas no significant difference had been found for pen. 

Our work addresses the lack of empirical evidence comparing touch mode-switching techniques and provides guidance to practitioners when choosing techniques and to researchers when designing new mode-switching methods.