Mobile devices and visual-spatial presentations of information are pervasive, especially for tasks in which the mobile device can be moved to close proximity of the task. This mobility allows the user to offload mental workload by allowing physical transformations of the device. In this study, we compared a fixed mobile device, a non-fixed mobile device, and a fixed desktop display to determine the effects imposed by the mental workload of transforming the frames of reference into alignment. Our results indicate that allowing the user to manipulate the device's position can influence performance by reducing the need for mental transformations.

Touchless mid-air gestural interaction has gained mainstream attention with the emergence of off-the-shelf commodity devices such as the Leap Motion and the Xbox Kinect. One of the issues with this form of interaction is fatigue, a problem colloquially known as the "Gorilla Arm Syndrome." However, by allowing interaction from a rested position, whereby the elbow is rested on a surface, this problem can be limited in its effect. In this paper we evaluate 3 possible methods for performing touchless mid-air gestural interaction from a rested position: a basic rested interaction, a simple calibrated interaction which models palm positions onto a hyperplane, and a more complex calibration which models the arm's interaction space using the angles of the forearm as input. The results of this work found that the two modeled interactions conform to Fitts's law and also demonstrated that implementing a simple model can improve interaction by improving performance and accuracy.

Frameworks such as Direct Manipulation or Instrumental Interaction have been an important force in HCI research. Evaluating the impact of frameworks can identify whether and how a framework was used, how it has evolved, and what trends have developed over time. However, studying the impact of such theoretical contributions requires consideration of various perspectives and level of impact. As a case study for investigating the impact of theoretical work in HCI, we present our evaluation of the impact of the Reality Based Interaction (RBI) framework, introduced by the authors in 2008. We provide our findings about the impact of the framework both on contemporary research, through content-based citation analysis, and in HCI education, through a survey we conducted on emerging interaction frameworks. The article contributes a comprehensive methodology for evaluating the impact of frameworks through our twofold approach: content-based citation analysis, including the design of a new citation typology; and a survey on the use of frameworks in education using a taxonomy of learning goals. We also consider the role of frameworks in HCI as well as the future of the RBI framework. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models; • Information systems → Link and co-citation analysis; • Social and professional topics → Computing education;

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Prior research suggests that "closer" interface styles, such as touch and tangible, would yield poorer performance on problem solving tasks as a result of their more natural interaction style. However, virtually no empirical investigations have been conducted to test this assumption. In this paper we describe an empirical study, comparing three interfaces, varying in closeness (mouse, touchscreen, and tangible) on a novel abstract problem solving task. We found that the tangible interface was significantly slower than both the mouse and touch interfaces. However, the touch and tangible interfaces were significantly more efficient than the mouse interface in problem solving across a number of measures. Overall, we found that the touch interface condition offered the best combination of speed and efficiency; in general, the closer interfaces offer significant benefit over the traditional mouse interface on abstract problem solving.