Best practices guideline for implementing gesture-based interfaces in smart consumer product design
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2021
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MACHINE-GENERATED SUMMARY NOTE : "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."- Arthur C. Clarke We are living in that future which about half a century ago Prolific Science fiction author Arthur C Clarke was professing in his attempt to define the boundaries of the possible future (Clarke 1962, 33). The technologies humankind has been using in their daily lives now are in many ways far more wondrous than the Entertaining Magics of old time with use of trickery and sleight of hand. We can comfortably say that our very common household remote controllers are even more capable than the magic wands of the wizards which they used to manipulate elements and objects (Fictional). We have reached an age where there is technological advancement to solve most of humanity's big problems if sufficient attention and effort is put into it. Although a bit slow, we see the sign of change with the focus shifting from fossil fuels to more sustainable forms of energy to address global warming issues. One area the technology integration has been excelling is the daily use products in common households. Our household devices which were clunky, cumbersome and somewhat difficult to operate have become slicker, smaller and so intelligent that they started to sense our needs and do what is needful for the moment. Heating systems are adjusting the temperature based on the user's preference of comfort, lights are turning on or off or even changing colors to match the mood of the user. More products are getting designed around the users and keeping their needs in the front and center. Technological advancements are being pushed to provide more understandability, convenience and ease of use of these kinds of products for many different demographics of users. These household devices are generally termed as smart consumer products because of their intelligence provided via sensors and connectivity with the internet. Consumers of these are slowly getting used to having household devices that can operate without conscious intervention. Interaction with these products are designed to be as optimal as possible, so that the users can receive the intended function without much effort of tinkering with the device itself. Also the interfaces are being brought down to context sensitive display screens on the device or just a smartphone that can connect to the device via bluetooth or wifi network. Two other other modes of interaction which are getting popular are voice and gesture. The benefit of these interface modes is that they use senses other than vision. That's why these interfaces are opening up new paradigms of interaction that can be more natural and intuitive to human cognition. These are also greatly advantageous to ensure accessibility for the users who face challenges to operate vision reliant interfaces due to vision impairment. However these other modes of interaction are still in their relative infancy. Upon investigating Gestural interfaces I have found that although the technology for sophisticated human gesture recognition and implementation for common household use has been in the market for more than a decade (e.g. Microsoft xbox Kinect device introduced in 2010, Samsung gesture control tv introduced in 2012), yet gesture control interfaces are very rarely implemented in mass for mainstream devices. Despite its obvious limitations in accessibility Visual only interface is still dominating the market, whilst until very recently voice control interfaces are getting popularized through smart home devices as Google home or Alexa by tech giants like Google and Amazon respectively. Part of the problem for gesture interfaces not having mass market appeal is that there is no established standard for implementing gesture-based interfaces that will create a consistent and predictable experience across multitude of available devices consumers use in their day to day life. References of Gesture-based Interfaces portrayed in popular media (e.g. Hollywood movies like Minority Report from 2002 or Ironman from 2008) are interesting to look at but don't really translate to real world implementability. So to ensure an acceptable, functional and enjoyable gesture-based interaction experience between the device and the users a tried and tested set of guidelines needs to be in place (Norman and Nielsen 2010, 46). These guidelines will be the stepping stone whenever an interface designer approaches to design gesture based interface for a device. In this paper I am going to propose some of the guidelines for implementing gesture-based interfaces for smart consumer products starting with assumptions derived from ethnographic observation, user observation, user interview and literature study. I am going to test these assumptions through user tests with different types of users with a simulated gesture-interface test rig followed by interviews. A Gesture set for a common household device will be designed to demonstrate how the guidelines come into play while designing gestures for smart household objects. I believe the set of guidelines from my research will be helpful to save time and effort for future gesture-based interface designers. These also will help to provide a better experience for the fully able users as well as users with disabilities to interact with gesture-based devices in their day to day life