A Language to Define Multi-Touch Interactions

Abstract

Touch has become a common interface for human computer interaction. From portable hand held devices like smart phones to tabletops, large displays and even devices that project on arbitrary surfaces support touch interface. However, at the end, it is the applications that bring meaning for these technologies to people. Incorporating a touch interface in application requires translating meaningful touches into system recognizable events. This process often involves complex implementations that are sometimes hard to fine tune. Due to the lack of higher-level frameworks, developers often end up writing code from scratch to implement touch interactions in their application. To address this, we present a domain-specific language to define multi-touch interaction that hides the low level implementation complexities from application developers. This allows them to focus on designing touch interactions that are natural and meaningful to the application context without worrying about implementation complexities.