Beyond Fingers and Thumbs - A Graceful Touch UI Elegant Multi-touch and Gesture UI with Context Dependent Prompting

Recent developments in multi-touch screens and gesture based in-air devices provide scope for the design of UIs with multi-digit control. Software functionality choices that were traditionally controlled using buttons on pointing devices can now be selected by different gestures and/or combinations of touches. However, requiring the user to memorize complex gestures can create a barrier to use. In our UI design, we consider it important to aid the users' awareness of their current state of interaction with the system. In this paper we introduce the concept of a UI component called a "Personicon" which can be used with multi-touch screens or multi-digit in-air control. We discuss user experience tests of this design with in-air control, revealing the degree to which our novel UI is learnable and the comfort of in-air use. Early results are covered here as a reference for further developments in this area.