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Mid-Air Gesture Control for Interface Design: Yea or Nay?

By Rain Noe - February 27, 2012

in UX

I'm not yet sold on mid-air gestures as a means of interfacing with a computer, and here's why:

A computer mouse is a precision tool, and back in the days of the original Mac's tiny 512×342 pixel screen, when the mouse made its popular debut, that precision tool was a great way to hit those tiny icons with accuracy.

Human gestures, on the other hand, are not precise. Unless you study kung fu or modern dance or are a neurosurgeon, chances are you simply don't have the muscle control to consistently perform very fine hand motions in mid-air.

It's my opinion that in order for gesture-based interface design to work, it needs to be paired with a flat physical surface. Not necessarily on-screen; I've found Apple's Magic Trackpad and the built-in trackpad of the MacBook Pro to be suitably precise. Placing four fingers on a flat surface and swiping sideways is easy to learn, easy to do and difficult to screw up.

That hasn't stopped Bellco Ventures from releasing their Ion Wireless Air Mouse Glove, seen up top. The wearable $80 device calls on the user to hold their hand in midair and point with accuracy at a screen, and watching the demo video, I'm not convinced:

Part of it is that the presentation is so poor that it's difficult to sit through. I found myself counting the amount of times the demonstrator said "Uh," as if sitting through a bad college lecture. But independent of that, do you think mid-air gesturing is going to catch on? When we first learn to drive a car, we don't have the fine muscle control in our foot to work the gas pedal with accuracy, so the car lurches all over the parking lot; but after time and practice we achieve a deftness. Do you think this device has merit, and that mid-air gesture control, with its attendant learning curve, will catch on?

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S McCrohan

12 years ago

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Mid-air gestures (and to a lesser extend, vertically mounted touch-screens) are at best a gimmick when one is engaged in a long-duration task or one with a high degree of interaction. It's not only imprecise, but also tiring unless very carefully designed.

However, a device very similar to this could be used for surface-based control on any convenient surface, likely with better precision and sensitivity than a vision-based system like the Kinect. There's no need for a large-area touch-sensitive interaction area if you move the touch-sensitivity onto your fingers. It has the overhead of requiring the glove or hand-mounted device, a definite minus compared to something like the Kinect. But camera-based estimation of touch pressure would be a challenge. There hasn't been a lot done with pressure-sensitivity even in modern touch screens, but it's an extra channel of interaction that a lot COULD be done with.
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mrtwills

12 years ago

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Nay
Seems like the glove is a step back. Microsoft Kinect is more futuristic. You don't even need a glove.
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emanster provolone

12 years ago

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NAY. And it will be a NAY for a looong time.

If touch screens are any sort of precursor to how this technology could play out. I imagine gesture control to be useful for certain applications, but essentially useless for most serious work where precision and control are needed.

Just as many musicians understand the importance of tactile feedback, knobs, keys and sliders. Most serious creative professionals will require the same for demanding work.

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