Gesture interaction with a bubble user interface: enhancing the user experience

In order to enhance users' interactions with TV user interfaces we developed a multimodal interaction mechanism that combines gesture in the form of tilting with pressing and puffing as input modalities for an interface that represents information in the form of soap bubbles. The exploratory user experience and usability study used a within subjects design investigating tilt as input mechanism to navigate through the 3D interface compared to tilt combined with pressure and breath input. Results of this first exploratory study indicate that the usability of an interaction mechanism is independent from the overall user experience the participants perceived. This indicates that gesture - while being fun to use and preferred on the short term for interaction - is not ready for the mass market in terms of usability. These observations were supported by the usability metrics and qualitative interview data gathered during the study.