Paper Readin #10 - Gesture Search: A Tool for Fast Mobile Data Access

Comments:
http://jaiachi.blogspot.com/
http://jngonzales-chi2011.blogspot.com/

Reference:

Gesture Search: A Tool for Fast Mobile Data Access

Yang Li
UIST 2010

Summary:

Gesture Search is a tool that allows users of mobile devices to quickly access specific data items.  As mobile device screens are small, interacting with tiny QWERTY keyboards can be frustrating.  Gesture Search attempts to alleviate that by interpreting gestures on a touch screen as input.  So, if someone were searching for "Anne," they would draw the letters A and N on the screen.  Gesture search is tolerant to some ambiguity, so if a letter such as A could be interpreted as H then the system will give both options.

By studying gestures for simple GUI interactions and character entry, data concerning both types of movement was gathered and plugged into an algorithm.  It was found that the more square a boundry box of a guesture, the more likely it was meant as a gesture and not GUI input. 

Gesture searches involve a sequence of gestures that consist of one or more characters.  Search history is recorded to optimize future searches.  Based on a study of 125 users covering almost 5,500 searches, the data show that 66% of searches are for contacts, 28% for applications, 4% for web bookmarks, and 2% for music.  With a ratio of 1.00 representing one-to-one query to target mapping, an 80% confidence interval can be found in a range from .8 to 1.4.  Feedback for Gesture Search was generally positive, with the main criticism being that it could only be accessed with an application on the home screen.

Discussion:

 As I have stated in previous blogs, I'm not a huge fan of the tiny keyboards on mobile devices.  While I don't see myself needing such an application to search for applications or web shortcuts, I would definately appreciate a better way to search for contacts.  Ideally this program (or something like it) could be expanded to include general use like typing in a URL, but I don't know if this system would prove to be any faster than what we use now.  Still, Gesture Search is a simple and practical application that I wouldn't mind having on my own phone.  If only my phone were smart...