Nenya: subtle and eyes-free mobile input with a magnetically-tracked finger ring

  • Authors:

  • Daniel Ashbrook;Patrick Baudisch;Sean White

  • Affiliations:

  • Nokia Research Center Hollywood, Santa Monica, California, USA;Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany;Nokia Research Center Hollywood, Santa Monica, California, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

We present Nenya, a new input device in the shape of a finger ring. Nenya provides an input mechanism that is always available, fast to access, and allows analog input, while remaining socially acceptable by being embodied in commonly worn items. Users make selections by twisting the ring and "click" by sliding it along the finger. The ring - the size of a regular wedding band - is magnetic, and is tracked by a wrist-worn sensor. Nenya's tiny size, eyes-free usability, and physical form indistinguishable from a regular ring make its use subtle and socially acceptable. We present two user studies (one- and two-handed) in which we studied sighted and eyes-free use, finding that even with no visual feedback users were able to select from eight targets.