Pointable: an in-air pointing technique to manipulate out-of-reach targets on tabletops

  • Authors:

  • Amartya Banerjee;Jesse Burstyn;Audrey Girouard;Roel Vertegaal

  • Affiliations:

  • Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada;Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada;Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada;Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Selecting and moving digital content on interactive tabletops often involves accessing the workspace beyond arm's reach. We present Pointable, an in-air, bimanual perspective-based interaction technique that augments touch input on a tabletop for distant content. With Pointable, the dominant hand selects remote targets, while the non-dominant hand can scale and rotate targets with a dynamic C/D gain. We conducted 3 experiments; the first showed that pointing at a distance using Pointable has a Fitts' law throughput comparable to that of a mouse. In the second experiment, we found that Pointable had the same performance as multi-touch input in a resize, rotate and drag task. In a third study, we observed that when given the choice, over 75% of participants preferred to use Pointable over multi-touch for target manipulation. In general, Pointable allows users to manipulate out-of-reach targets, without loss of performance, while minimizing the need to lean, stand up, or involve collocated collaborators.