Adding context to multi-touch region selections

Strothoff Sven, Hinrichs Klaus

Abstract

As applications originating on desktop computers find their way onto multi-touch enabled mobile devices many inter- action tasks that were designed for computer mice spread to new touch-based environments. One example is region selection, for instance in image editing applications. Several studies already investigated multi-touch object selections however, region selections have not been closely examined. Our proposed selection technique was designed for multi- touch interaction and better suits mobile devices. Taking advantage of multiple touches enables the user to easily extend, modify and refine selections based on the order and relative position|the context|of touches. We were concerned that controlling more degrees of freedom with our technique could negatively impact simple selections. To evaluate its performance we present a user study that compares it to currently used techniques. Results show that our multi-touch region selection represents a good compromise of speed and precision, while providing the possibility to easily refine the selected region. © 2013 ACM.