Paper (Talk)

Despite the wide availability of body-sensing technologies, the design of control gestures that feel natural and that can be intuitively "guessed" by the users is still an embodied interaction challenge. This is especially true for systems that require a set of complementary control gestures. Part of the problem lies in the separation between the locus of the interaction (the body) and the focus of the interaction (the screen). We extend Johnson’s theory of Embodied Schemata with Embodied Allegories, in order to create a unifying context that spans across the locus and focus of interaction. We present results that demonstrate how this approach increases the chance that users select the same gesture or movement for producing an effect within the virtual context, and that the resultant gesture set is deemed more intuitive by users. We also present the accompanying methodology, "Framed Guessability," which can increase users' agreement when conducting Guessability Studies.