Drag and drop the apple: the semantic weight of words and images in touch-based interaction

  • Authors:
  • Ilhan Aslan;Martin Murer;Verena Fuchsberger;Andrew Fugard;Manfred Tscheligi

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Salzburg, Austria;University of Salzburg, Austria;University of Salzburg, Austria;University of Salzburg, Austria;University of Salzburg, Austria

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

In this paper we report a user study to investigate the effect of semantic weight in a touch-based drag and drop task. The study was motivated by our own interest in exploring potential factors that influence touch behavior and supported by results in related neuroscience research. The question we intended to answer is: "Do people drag the representation of a smaller and lighter real world object (e.g. an apple) different than the representation of a heavier and larger real world object (e.g. a car)?". Participants were asked to perform a drag and drop task repeatedly on a tablet device. Dragged objects were the same physical size on screen, but represented real world objects that were either heavy and large or light and small. We studied two representation modalities (i.e. image and text). In both representation modalities, semantically heavier objects were dragged significantly faster than semantically lighter objects.