Semiotic analysis of multi-touch interface design: The MuTable case study

Abstract

Although multi-touch applications and user interfaces have become increasingly common in the last few years, there is no agreedupon multi-touch user interface language yet. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the design of multi-touch user interfaces, this paper presents semiotic analysis of multi-touch applications as an interesting approach to gain deeper understanding of the way users use and understand multi-touch interfaces. In a case study example, user tests of a multi-touch tabletop application platform called MuTable are analysed with the Communicability Evaluation Method to evaluate to what extent users understand the intended messages (e.g., cues about interaction and functionality) the MuTable platform communicates. The semiotic analysis of this case study shows that although multi-touch interfaces can facilitate user exploration, the lack of well-known standards in multi-touch interface design and in the use of gestures makes the user interface difficult to use and interpret. This conclusion points to the importance of the elusive balance between letting users explore multi-touch systems on their own on one hand, and guiding users, explaining how to use and interpret the user interface, on the other.

Multi-touch gestures for pre-kindergarten children

“…Thus, we also plan to investigate the suitability of existing semiotic approaches, such as those proposed by Derboven et al (2012), to advise users of the gestures they are expected to perform in multi-touch applications for pre-kindergarteners.…”

Pregnant Users’ Perceptions of the Birth Plan Interface in the “My Prenatal Care” App: Observational Validation Study (Preprint)

“…The lack of or low number of communicability disruptions in the CEM test observed in the present study were related with correct task executions. This methodology, a systematic and qualitative procedure, adequately evaluated the users' experience of interaction with the interface by emphasizing on the aspects of communication, as done in others reports [18,23]. When applying CEM in the present study, our expectation was an early involvement of pregnant women users in the prototyping phase of the BP interface, to identify bottlenecks and direct improvements that need to be made in the app.…”

An Analytical Approach to Creating Multitouch Gesture Vocabularies in Mobile Devices: A Case Study for Mobile Web Browsing Gestures

“…Computer scientists commonly use this method, because their objective is not to find optimal gestures but only to find novel gestures that are recognizable accurately. Many examples exist in the literature (Bailly, Müller, & Lecolinet, 2012;Bau & Mackay, 2008;Baudisch & Chu, 2009;Derboven, De Roeck, & Verstraete, 2012;Keefe et al, 2012;Lepinski, Grossman, & Fitzmaurice, 2010;Liao, Liu, Liew, & Wilcox, 2010;Matejka, Grossman, Lo, & Fitzmaurice, 2009;Motamedi, 2008;Moyle & Cockburn, 2003;Olwal, Feiner, & Heyman, 2008;Roth & Turner, 2009;Roudaut, Lecolinet, & Guiard, 2009;Wang & Ren, 2009;Wu & Balakrishnan, 2003;Yatani, Partridge, Bern, & Newman, 2008) With the specificity method, however, it is difficult to guarantee generality of the designed gestures, because gesture design is based on the designer's subjective opinion. Thus, the design process is usually followed by a user evaluation to ensure that the designed gestures are also familiar or effective to end users.…”