GestureCards

Abstract

Describing gestures in detail has various advantages for project teams: communication is simplified, interaction concepts are documented, and technical decisions are supported. Common gesture notations focus on textual or graphical elements only, but we argue that hybrid approaches have various advantages, especially because some gesture traits are easier to describe with text and others with arrows or icons. We present GestureCards, a hybrid gesture notation mixing graphical and textual elements we developed to describe multi-touch gestures. To evaluate our approach, we compared how users perceive and are affected by different notations. First, we compared GestureCards with a textual notation and observed advantages in terms of speed, correctness, and confidence. Second, we asked participants to compare GestureCards, a textual, and a graphical notation and rate them. The results indicate that the participants' perception depends on the gesture, but GestureCards received consistently good ratings. Third, we monitored several participants working with GestureCards solving practical development tasks for gesture-based applications and they felt well supported by GestureCards.