On interface closeness and problem solving

Authors:
Thomas J. Donahue;G. Michael Poor;Martez E. Mott;Laura Marie Leventhal;Guy Zimmerman;Dale Klopfer
Affiliations:
Tufts University, Medford, MA;Baylor University, Waco, TX;University of Washington, Seattle, WA;Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH;Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH;Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH
Venue:
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction
Year:
2013

Citing 8
Cited 0

Bricks: laying the foundations for graspable user interfaces

CHI '95 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
A conceptual framework for mixed reality environments: designing novel learning activities for young children

Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
Metacognitive Theories of Visual Programming: What do we think we are doing?

VL '96 Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages
Child's play: a comparison of desktop and physical interactive environments

Proceedings of the 2005 conference on Interaction design and children
Do tangible interfaces enhance learning?

Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction
Tangibles in the balance: a discovery learning task with physical or graphical materials

Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction
More than speed? an empirical study of touchscreens and body awareness on an object manipulation task

HCII'11 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Human-computer interaction: interaction techniques and environments - Volume Part II
The Design of Everyday Things

The Design of Everyday Things

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Prior research suggests that "closer" interface styles, such as touch and tangible, would yield poorer performance on problem solving tasks as a result of their more natural interaction style. However, virtually no empirical investigations have been conducted to test this assumption. In this paper we describe an empirical study, comparing three interfaces, varying in closeness (mouse, touchscreen, and tangible) on a novel abstract problem solving task. We found that the tangible interface was significantly slower than both the mouse and touch interfaces. However, the touch and tangible interfaces were significantly more efficient than the mouse interface in problem solving across a number of measures. Overall, we found that the touch interface condition offered the best combination of speed and efficiency; in general, the closer interfaces offer significant benefit over the traditional mouse interface on abstract problem solving.