An Empirical Characterization of Touch-Gesture Input-Force on Mobile Devices

Abstract

Designers of force-sensitive user interfaces lack a groundtruth characterization of input force while performing common touch gestures (zooming, panning, tapping, and rotating). This paper provides such a characterization firstly by deriving baseline force profiles in a tightly-controlled user study; then by examining how these profiles vary in different conditions such as form factor (mobile phone and tablet), interaction position (walking and sitting) and urgency (timed tasks and untimed tasks). We conducted two user studies with 14 and 24 participants respectively and report: (1) force profile graphs that depict the force variations of common touch gestures, (2) the effect of the differen..