Paper Reading #15 - Gesture Search: A Tool for Fast Mobile Data Access

Comments

Ryan

Wesley

Reference

Gesture Search: A Tool for Fast Mobile Data Access

Yang Li

UIST 2010 - New York

Summary

Mobile phones are beginning to store more and more data essential to the lives of their users. Quickly accessing specific data items on a platform which contains hundreds or thousands of pieces of information is a difficult task with current user interface designs.Gesture Search allows for user to employ their entire multitouch screen as a gesture area and quickly access specific data items. The software runs in the background and distinguishes regular user interface events from a gesture. When a gesture is detected the search feature becomes active. The gestures are in the form of handwritten letters in sequence. For example, a user searching for a contact named Anne, would first write the letter A using their finger as an input device, they would then continue to enter letters until the contact appeared. The Gesture Search software also provides a mechanism for distinguishing more frequently accessed data and ranking it higher in the candidate list of possibilities. A user study of overall like-ability showed an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 for over 5000 ratings.

Analysis

This paper points out an interesting fact about mobile devices: our data is a bit harder to find. The paper discounts current systems, like Spotlight search on iPhone, as requiring too much attention and time to use. While I agree that a general gesture across the entire screen is easier than using an onscreen keyboard, I am not certain this is the best method to employ for finding data. I have not had an opportunity to use a system like this and would be very interested in trying one. I believe users would quickly adapt to any recognition quirks and be able to use it as a tool quickly. Overall though, I’d still like my data to find me instead of the other way around.