Do User-Defined Gestures for Flatscreens Generalize to Interactive Spherical Displays for Adults and Children?

Interactive spherical displays offer unique opportunities for engagement in public spaces. Research on flatscreen tabletop displays has mapped the gesture design space and compared gestures created by adults and children. However, it is not clear if the findings from these prior studies can be directly applied to spherical displays. To investigate this question, we conducted a user-defined gestures study to understand the gesture preferences of adults and children (ages 7 to 11) for spherical displays. We compare the physical characteristics of the gestures performed on the spherical display to gestures on tabletop displays from prior work. We found that the spherical form factor influenced users' gesture design decisions. For example, users were more likely to perform multi-finger or whole-handed gestures on the sphere than in prior work on tabletop displays. Our findings will inform the design of interactive applications for spherical displays.