TV channels in your pocket! Linking smart pockets to smart TVs

Abstract

We present a gesture-based user interface for smart TVs that employs deictic gestures to control the content displayed on the TV screen. Our interface implements an instance of the “Smart-Pockets” interaction technique, where links to digital content, in our case to users' preferred television channels and shows, are stored inside users' pockets and readily accessible with a mere pointing of the hand to those pockets. Pointing gestures to the pockets and towards the TV screen are detected using the Inertial Measurement Unit embedded in Myo, a smart armband. We discuss the ways in which our prototype opens new opportunities for hybrid, gesture- and pointing-based interactions for smart TVs as well as opportunities for designing interactions that take place at the periphery of user attention.