Automatic adoption of touch as pointing modality on a touchscreen laptop: Beginners' motivators and inhibitors
Brown, Kimberly (2015)
2015
MDP in Human-Technology Interaction
Informaatiotieteiden yksikkö - School of Information Sciences
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2015-11-05
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:uta-201512102514
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:uta-201512102514
Tiivistelmä
Touch modality is a widely integrated and a highly desirable feature in modern interactive technological devices. It is the de-facto interaction modality in touch-enabled mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Nowadays, the list of touchable interfaces is continuously expanding and even includes previously non-touchable devices such as laptops. Touch modality in laptops, however, does not stand out as the default modality for interacting with the device. Primarily, a laptop can be operated with either of the traditional point-and-click modality alternatives already present, the mouse and the trackpad. User studies on pointing modalities have generated little information on the automatic use of touch since these studies are often grounded on users' preferential intentions, but rarely on the drivers that facilitate or impede the adoption of touch.
This thesis endeavours to understand how certain factors such as background in touch usage, usage mode, type of pointing task, pointing targets and starting modality motivate or inhibit beginners' automatic adoption of touch modality for activating interactive web elements on a touchscreen laptop device.
An observation of users' pointing movements was conducted in two sets of possible laptop usage mode - on a desktop and on a couch - with the aim of identifying the frequency of touches occurring as first instance. The observation aims to investigate the automatic adoption of touch by having participants perform pointing tasks on interactive web elements.
The data obtained show that participants are motivated to automatically adopt touch within a more relaxed use context such as sitting on a sofa or on a playful task such as drawing.
In conclusion, while there are not too many interactions on a touchscreen laptop which would necessitate the use of touch, its automatic adoption is, nevertheless, possible and has the potential to become widespread if user interfaces convey discoverable features of 'touchability' and if perceived worthiness of using touch overrides existing habitual usage of non-touch modalities.
This thesis endeavours to understand how certain factors such as background in touch usage, usage mode, type of pointing task, pointing targets and starting modality motivate or inhibit beginners' automatic adoption of touch modality for activating interactive web elements on a touchscreen laptop device.
An observation of users' pointing movements was conducted in two sets of possible laptop usage mode - on a desktop and on a couch - with the aim of identifying the frequency of touches occurring as first instance. The observation aims to investigate the automatic adoption of touch by having participants perform pointing tasks on interactive web elements.
The data obtained show that participants are motivated to automatically adopt touch within a more relaxed use context such as sitting on a sofa or on a playful task such as drawing.
In conclusion, while there are not too many interactions on a touchscreen laptop which would necessitate the use of touch, its automatic adoption is, nevertheless, possible and has the potential to become widespread if user interfaces convey discoverable features of 'touchability' and if perceived worthiness of using touch overrides existing habitual usage of non-touch modalities.