Juan Rosso Pirela -Malleable Interactive Surfaces for Distant Mobile Tangible Interaction

Sliders are one of the most used widgets on mobile devices for the adjustment of continuous parameters (e.g., screen brightness, speaker sound volume). On mobile devices, sliders are represented graphically and are usually long and positioned in a vertical or horizontal way. These characteristics pose two major problems: a visual dependency to operate the graphical slider and a limited range of movement of the thumb when using the mobile device with a single hand. This thesis focuses on new eyes-free one-handed interaction techniques to efficiently operate sliders on mobile devices. The techniques rely on shape-changing tangible sliders capable of changing different design properties (e.g., orientation, length and side of the mobile device where it is presented) in order to support eyes-free one-handed interaction. Results from seven different experiments suggest that: 1) a conventional tangible slider delivers good performance but requires handgrip changes when acquiring targets in a distance range of 70mm. 2) a dual-side tangible slider delivers good performance and supports a stable handgrip when acquiring targets in a distance range of 100mm. 3) an extendable tangible slider delivers good performance and supports a stable handgrip when acquiring targets in a distance range of 200mm. Moreover, the performed experiments allowed the exploration of a part of shape-changing tangible user interfaces that has barely been studied: manipulation during shape-change. The performed studies show how different shape-changing design characteristics, like the orientation and amplitude, can impact the interaction.