Pre-touch proxemics: moving the design space of touch targets from still graphics towards proxemic behaviors
Ilhan Aslan, Elisabeth André · 2017
Proxemic touch targets continuously change in relation to a user's hand in mid-air before a physical touch occurs. Previous work has, for example shown that expanding targets are capable to improve target acquisition performance on touch interfaces. However, it is unclear how proxemic touch targets influence user experience (UX) in a broader sense, including hedonic qualities. Towards closing this research gap the paper reports on two user studies. The first study is a qualitative study with five experts, providing in-depth insights on a variety of change-types (e.g., size, form, color) and how they, for example, influence perceived functional and aesthetic qualities of proxemic touch targets. A follow-up user study with 36 participants explores the UX of a proxemic touch target compared to non-proximal versions of the same target. The results highlight a positive significant effect of the proxemic design on both pragmatic and hedonic qualities.