Browsing by Author "Chen, Xiang (Anthony)"

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    Body-centric interaction with a screen-based handheld device
    (2012) Chen, Xiang (Anthony); Greenberg, Saul; Levy, Richard M.
    Modern mobile devices rely on the screen as a primary input modality. Yet the small screen real-estate limits interaction possibilities, motivating researchers to explore alternate input techniques. Within this arena, this thesis explores Body-Centric Interaction (BCI), specifically in the context of Using a Screen-based Handheld Device. In particular, BCI creates a class of interaction techniques that allows a person to position/orient her mobile device to navigate and manipulate digital contents anchored in the space on and around the body. The research methodology consists of an iterative process of bottom-up prototyping, generalizing recurring design themes, reflecting on these themes and on related work, and producing new designs as a consequence. As a result, this thesis contributes a new design direction for interacting with mobile digital contents where the paradigm shifts from the device's screen to the user's body. A class of interaction techniques, delivered as a set of reusable design examples and three recurring design themes, articulate how this new design direction can be realized, what new experience it can offer, and what issues and challenges we need to address.
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    Body-Centric Interaction: Using the Body as an Extended Mobile Interaction Space
    (2011-10-17T22:21:35Z) Chen, Xiang (Anthony); Tang, Anthony; Boring, Sebastian; Greenberg, Saul
    Current mobile devices require a person to navigate and interact with applications and their content via on-screen operations. The problem is that mobility trades off with screen size, providing limited space for interactions. To mitigate this problem, we explore how our body can extend the interaction space of a mobile device. We call this Body- Centric Interaction (BCI), a design space comprised of three dimensions. First, interactions occur in different proximal spaces on/around/far-from the body. Second, different mapping strategies can associate digital knowledge or interactions with these spaces. Third, various input techniques can help perform such interactions. We make use of this design space to 1) unify existing BCIrelated research, and 2) generatively design a set of proofof- concept prototypes. Overall, we contribute a design space that articulates and envisions how our body can be leveraged to create rich interaction possibilities that extends beyond a mobile device’s limited screen space.
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    The Fat Thumb: Using the Thumb's Contact Size for Single-Handed Mobile Interaction
    (2011-12-02T21:11:14Z) Boring, Sebastian; Ledo, David; Chen, Xiang (Anthony); Marquardt, Nicolai; Tang, Anthony; Greenberg, Saul
    Modern mobile devices allow a rich set of multi-finger interactions that combine modes into a single fluid act, for example, one finger for panning blending into a two-finger pinch gesture for zooming. Such gestures require the use of both hands: one holding the device while the other is interacting. While on the go, however, only one hand may be available to both hold the device and interact with it. This mostly limits interaction to a single-touch (i.e., the thumb), forcing users to switch between input modes explicitly. In this paper, we contribute the Fat Thumb interaction technique, which uses the thumb’s contact size as a form of simulated pressure. This adds a degree of freedom, which can be used, for example, to integrate panning and zooming into a single interaction. Contact size determines the mode (i.e., panning with a small size, zooming with a large one), while thumb movement performs the selected mode. We discuss nuances of the Fat Thumb based on the thumb’s limited operational range and motor skills when that hand holds the device. We compared Fat Thumb to three alternative techniques, where people had to pan and zoom to a predefined region on a map. Participants performed fastest with the least strokes using Fat Thumb.