TouchGhosts: Guides for Improving Visibility of Multi-Touch Interaction

Abstract

Multi-touch interfaces are becoming increasingly fashionable in public spaces, but the majority of users are not familiar with multi-touch interaction. While multi-touch interfaces try to support intuitive interaction, techniques beyond the traditional move-rotate-scale are often inaccessible to the general public. Moreover, users typically interact with interfaces in public spaces over short time-spans, and thus have limited time to explore the interface. To counter the specific requirements on the accessibility of a multi-touch interface, we introduce TouchGhosts: visual guides embedded in the interface, demonstrating interaction techniques to the user. TouchGhosts are activated while operating the interface, providing guidance on the fly and within the context-of-use. Configurable strategies decide how a TouchGhost should be activated and which visualisation will be presented to the user.