Multi-touch Gesture and User Mental Representation Research

Abstract

According to the appearance of a conceptually new type of interface, multi-touch gesture technology, it might fundamentally change the interaction mode between user and the system. This study aims to understand the mapping relationships among users’ mental representations and operational styles of multi-touch gesture. A total of 30 users were divided into two groups according to their cognitive styles (verbalizer and visualizer). And 23 most common PC system tasks were identified as the experiment tasks. The researcher used wizard-of-Oz form of multi-touch prototype and the retrospective recalled method to collects and analysis users’ thoughts qualitatively. The results found significant differences between verbalizer and visualizer.