The usability of small devices such as smartphones or interactive watches is often hampered by the limited size of command vocabularies. This paper is an attempt at better understanding how finger identification may help users invoke commands on touch screens, even without recourse to multi-touch input. We describe how finger identification can increase the size of input vocabularies under the constraint of limited real estate, and we discuss some visual cues to communicate this novel modality to novice users. We report a controlled experiment that evaluated, over a large range of input-vocabulary sizes, the efficiency of single-touch command selections with vs. without finger identification. We analyzed the data not only in terms of traditional time and error metrics, but also in terms of a throughput measure based on Shannon's theory, which we show offers a synthetic and parsimonious account of users' performance. The results show that the larger the input vocabulary needed by the designer, the more promising the identification of individual fingers.

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When automating tasks using some form of artificial intelligence, some inaccuracy in the result is virtually unavoidable. In many cases, the user must decide whether to try the automated method again, or fix it themselves using the available user interface. We argue this decision is influenced by both perceived automation accuracy and degree of task "controllability" (how easily and to what extent an automated result can be manually modified). This relationship between accuracy and controllability is investigated in a 750-participant crowdsourced experiment using a controlled, gamified task. With high controllability, self-reported satisfaction remained constant even under very low accuracy conditions, and overall, a strong preference was observed for using manual control rather than automation, despite much slower performance and regardless of very poor controllability.